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

Summery

Sometimes in life you have to see things right through to the bitter end, even if you wish you didn't. (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: 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!

I am a dreamer but when I wake,
You can't break my spirit, it's my dreams you take,
And as you move on, remember me,
Remember us and all we used to be,
I've seen you cry, I've seen you smile,
I've watched you sleeping for a while,

Start to Finish

Yamanaka Ino, such a beautiful thing, yet cursed with so many flaws, he mused. So vain and arrogant and yet, so focused and determined. She was a cacophony of contradictions all merged into one very luscious body, and yet she seemed to remain totally unaware of how attractive she was. They said the beauty without flaw was not true beauty, and Sasuke wondered absently if anyone had ever bothered to tell her that. Would it have made a difference if they had?

If she hadn't lived most of her life trying to attain perfection, a state that did not truly exists, would they still be standing in this place? If the girl she had been all those years ago had been the woman that she was now would he still have left? Pretty little Ino, a head so full of hopes and dreams, so intent on attracting his attention she hadn't seen that it would have been hers for the taking if only she had not chased after it so much.

The golden flower of Konoha, always reaching for something that was just beyond her grasp. But what sort of flower was she? No one had ever said. A buttercup, a common bloom but bright and strong just like she was. Or a yellow rose, sweet scented but with sharp thorns that ripped apart anyone who got too close. Had he got too close? Or had he moved past that point, moved beyond close so that she was now a part of him?

It was strange that it was only now, at the very end that everything became clear. All the things he wanted to say to her and all the things he wanted her to say to him. How stupid he had been letting all the opportunities he'd had slip past, like water that drained through his finger even as he tried to hold onto it. He had wasted so much time and now that when only seconds remained he realised that was he needed was an infinity to communicate all that was in his heart.

That she had touched his heart and his soul, the only parts of him that he had thought he had kept hidden from all the pain the world had to offer. That he thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, whether her face was wreathed in smiles or puffy and red from the tears she had shed. That he would have spent his life with her, been the father of her child and that he didn't think he could now live without her in his life.

But mostly that he would have got down on bended knee and beard his soul to her if she had asked him to. That he would have done anything and everything in his power to make her happy because she meant that much to him. Because most of all he loved her.

Sasuke signed softly as he looked into her terrified face. Even in the grip of fear she was still beautiful, but she always had been to him. Always had been and always would be. She had a strange golden fairness that he had never seen before in any living thing. It reminded him of the first magic warmth of the spring sunshine, that moment when it was clear that the harsh cold of winter had past. He loved the warmth she had.

"My Ino-chan…." It was more of a sigh than anything else, and ever as the sound echoed in her ears Ino realised it was the first time he had called her by her given name.

The sound that escaped Ino's lips was a cross between a gasp and a cry. The hot stickiness of blood coated her hands and the heat of salty tears ran in rivers over her cheeks. The moment stretched out before her, dragging out the seconds like a piece of elastic on the point of snapping. His breath was soft against her skin, fluttering against her cheeks like the wings of so many butterflies, his mouth so close that he might have been leaning in to kiss her goodbye.

Voices inside her head screamed out in fear and pain even as she forced herself to watch. To watch as his eyes slowly changed from crimson to black and then how the light in those same eyes dimmed and faded, like a candle guttering in the wind before being blown out. The smile, so like those she remembered from her childhood, formed on his lips as his hand reached out to stroke her face. His fingers were a hairs breath from her skin when his arm went limp and he slumped to the ground.

Forth lumbar down and a little to the left, the abdominal aorta. The sweet spot as many ANBU Black OPS refereed to it, death was almost instantaneous.

She wanted to brake down, to throw herself down on the ground, cling to his body and sob her heart out, but she couldn't. There was so much that she wanted to do, to scream until the back of her throat ripped and her mouth was filled the sharp copper taste of her own blood. She wanted the pain she had felt only moments ago, the agony that had torn at her muscles but which had faded in comparison to the pain the gnawed at her heart.

But more than anything she wanted to wake up from the nightmare and find herself safe and warn wrapped in the comforting embrace of his arms.

With a trembling hand Ino reached down and picked up the scroll from where it had fallen. So much death over such a little thing, it was hard to believe. It was just a roll of old parchment, the worst it could do was give her a paper cut. And yet because of this one small thing she had taken the life of the only man she knew she would ever have the ability to love. She position it carefully on the stone alter and fighting the pain and self-loathing that threatened to overwhelm her forced her hands to perform the required seals and after mumbling the name of the Jutsu watched as the parchment crumbled to ashes.

Next she turned her attention to the bodies of the hired thieves, leaving them here to rot was one possibility but the scent of blood would sooner or later attract wild animals. Even after what they had done and tried to do Ino disliked the idea of leaving them for meat, she cared too much for the wildlife to left them feed of such rancid flesh. Gathering her strength the blonde pulled and tugged at the mangled remains, heaving them until they where piled together in the centre of the temple.

She repeated the seals she had performed earlier and watched as the mound of bodies was engulfed in bright dancing flames. It looked like some barbaric human sacrifice to a heathen god, Ino thought, as the acrid stench of burning flesh assaulted her senses. It was over in minutes, though the foul smell still hung in the air. That was the thing about fire created by jutsu it would burn as hot and fast as the ninja who crated it could make it, even hot enough to turn bones to dust.

She hated doing it but drew the process out as long as she could for when it was done Ino was forced to turn once more to Sasuke's body.

The blonde mind walker was torn. She could not take his corpse with her back to Konoha but at the same time the idea of reducing his remains to a pile of ashes turned her stomach and made bile rise in her throat. Ino glanced around the dilapidated former house of worship, looking for any clue as to what she should do and her eyes alighted on the alter on which the scroll had rested. All around it lay pieces of stone and bits of roof that had fallen. It would be heard and laborious work but it seemed the right thing to do, if anything in that place could be described as right.

Once had been bad enough, the soft sound like the whisper of silk, as she had plunged the sharp blade directly into his heart had echoed in her ears. The heat of his blood as it flowed over her hand, so warm like liquid fire had left Ino frozen and chilled to the bone. She had killed Sasuke, but now he was lying on the hard unforgiving stone dull eyes staring unseeingly at the half-collapsed ceiling. Crouching down beside him, Ino placed her hand on his face and, with the easy of the medical trained ninja, closed his eyes while her mind screamed.

It was the part she hated the most. The moment that would replay over and over in her dreams for years to come. When his lids fell shut for that finale time, when it felt as if she were taking his life all over again. When she killed him for the second time.

Ino sang inside her head, nursery rhymes, snippets of half forgotten songs, anything she could think of to keep herself from thinking about what she was doing. To try and block out the fact that the body she was burying in the makeshift burial mound was that of Uchiha Sasuke. On and on she forced herself to keep going, finding stones the right size, fitting them into place like pieces of some horrific jigsaw.

Hands bloody and raw from contact with so much rough masonry she slotted the last stone into place and fought the urge to fall to her knees and weep. Her strength was all but spent, her chakra all but gone and Ino knew that should she falter, stop for even a moment she would not be able to make herself move once more. When she stopped it would all be over.

Stepping outside the blonde kunoichi was shocked to find that the sun was bleeding to death in the evening sky. Flooding the heavens with vivid patches of gold and crimson, some eventually darkening to a cool purple as the evening drew in. Birds returning to their nests were black arrowheads against the red backdrop and the mottled sky was like a child's colouring book, layers of colour splashed brilliantly one on top of the other. The long shadows of evening stretched out on the ground, seeming almost to reach out for her like the talons of some hideous monster.

The fading light turned the ruined walls of the once impressive temple from a time worn creamy grey to a warmly glowing rose-gold. And though she was almost on the point of collapse Ino knew that there was one more thing that she had to do. As it was anyone could have just strolled in and dismantled the resting place of the man she loved and that was a thought she just could not bear. Forcing her stiff and swollen finger to obey her commands, Ino moved though the complex series of symbols before pressing her palms to the ground and murmuring the name of the jutsu.

She could feel her strength being sapped from her body as her chakra, the little of it that was left, was drawn through her hands and into the earth beneath her fingers. For one long drawn out moment nothing seemed to happen and then from between two large stones that had once been the base of a tall pillar a green shoot appeared and began to rove over the stone. More questing plants quickly followed Honeysuckle, Ivy and Jasmine all roving over ruin, covering the entrance and pulling down more of the brick work. Until, due to Ino's helping hand, Mother Nature claimed the dilapidated temple as her own and stood guard over the body of the fallen shinobi who would forever remain safely entombed within its crumbled walls.

Ino felt that she should say something, but didn't know what. She had not prayed to Kami-sama since the death of her beloved Asuma-sensei, when he had been dying in her arms and all her skill have proved to not be enough. Then she had prayed, as she had never done before, swearing that she would do anything asked of her if only this one man might live.

At the time of her father's passing she had screamed and wailed at the sky, demanding answers that were never given to her. But by then she had been hardened to the fact that there was no higher power that she could turn to, that all she had in the world was herself. And she could not now prey to something she didn't believe in, even for Sasuke could not she force herself to do such a thing.

Stepping forward, she reached out and let her fingers caress the fragile blooms that filled the air with their heady perfume. With a trembling hand, Ino broke the small stem, sending the white Jasmine flowers into a dancing frenzy before for raising it so she could breath the sweet scent deep into her lungs.

Half-forgotten fragments memory filled her head. She remembered being very young and holding her father's hand as the stood before a neatly tended grave. Ino could hear her father's voice, strong and clear, yet with a slight tremble to it, which at the time she had not understood, but years later she had come to recognise as grief. Now she recited the poem to Sasuke just as all those years ago her father had done for her mother.

"The tears I feel today, I'll wait to shed tomorrow. Though I'll not sleep this night, nor find relief from sorrow. My eyes must keep their sight; I dare not be tear blinded. I must be free to talk, not choked with grief, clear minded. My mouth can not betray the anguish that I know. Yes, I'll keep my tears till later, but my grief will never go."

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

Big love and inspiration

Lamanth