#7 Bile

It started when she was dropped again.

An important mission that called for the skillset only an Ino-Shika-Cho combination could provide came up. But instead of her, a distant and more experienced elder cousin has taken her place.

"It was requested for by the team leader," was the explanations the chuunin at the missions desk gave her.

The team leader was Shikamaru.

As Ino walked back to her family shop, she mused. She could almost hear how he would've asked Tsunade – in that distinctive drawl of his, with his hands in his pockets. The word 'troublesome' echoed in her mind not unlike a broken record. It made her feel ugly - ugly in her bitterness, ugly in her understanding and ugly in her loneliness.

The bitterness pooled in her gut and coiled like a tapeworm that leeched from her and made her feel weirdly hollow. 'Toxic' was what her Kunoichi Arts sensei called it – the resentment of one's own situation and helplessness – she was eating her own toxic.

Someday, it would surely eat her back.

At that thought, Ino suddenly stopped in the middle of the street, ignoring the angry grumbles of the people walking behind her. She looked up. The sky was blue and cloudy. Shikamaru would've loved it.

She spat on the ground.

She laughed bitterly to herself, already feeling the toxic starting to burn her inner linings, spreading now as a mild heat that would soon surely scorch her, leave her tearing at her own skin.

Why don't you trust me?

She came home hours later, the house ghostly silent at 1am, her knuckles bloodied and throbbing.

The patrolling chuunin in charge of the training grounds would report a new wooden post needed for training Ground 10 come morning.


A/N. AU. This is set during Shippuden before Asuma-sensei died. It's one of those stories that came to me because of this yearning to have Ino portrayed as something different than the usual.

I'm actually really interested in an Ino that is hiding behind a mask all the time, someone who's actually a lot similar to Sasuke's darkness. I've never 'shipped' SasuIno seriously, only in flings, but I always thought that her interest in him ran differently – not deeper – than infatuation. I like to think she was drawn to him because he was the same as her. And this drabble is reflecting just a bit of that unseen side.

It isn't really a romantic ShikaIno, not explicitly, but I love how there is such potential for emotional torment between them, as really different personalities? Haha, angsty ships have forever been the ones that made me go crazy.