A/N: Just a little in-between chapter starring everyone's favorite blonde rival! Enjoy!


Chapter 31: Lamentations of an Heiress


"Ino? Ino, dear, please come here."

"Yes, Mother?" The blonde asked, poking her head into the sitting room. Her eyes widened when she saw Shikamaru's mother there, and she quickly curtsied to the older woman. "Mrs. Nara."

"Oh please, Ino, you don't need to do that." The woman chuckled, waving a hand. "Your mother and I were just discussing something."

"Ah, yes, yes." Mrs. Yamanaka nodded primly. She gestured to the chair beside her. "Please, come sit."

"Is... this about the wedding?" Ino asked hesitantly, sitting down with her hands folded in her lap.

"Partially, yes." Yoshino Nara shared a glance with her mother. "As you've been informed, the marriage between our clans will be in approximately two weeks, on the eleventh."

"Yes." She confirmed, frowning. "What about it, may I ask?"

"Dear," Ino's mother began.

Oh, no. Whenever she used that tone, it never meant anything good was about to happen. The way she looked so sympathetic, too... had she been sold off to the army or something?

"As you know, our clans have been close friends with the Akimichi clan for decades. I seem to recall you and the clan heir are good friends." Mrs. Yamanaka explained, placing a hand on her daughter's. "Chouji, as you've heard, has already become a royal soldier."

"Well yes, Shikamaru has been bitter about it," Ino said slowly, still kind of puzzled. Then it hit her. "You don't mean."

"As of the thirteenth, you are to become a soldier, along with Shikamaru," Mrs. Yamanaka confirmed. "You three will fight together in any case that Konoha is attacked. We didn't wish to give you this burden, but your father will be busy with the dungeons, and the elders have no doubts that you three will be able to lead us to victory."

"You will be doing our families a great service, Ino," Yoshino piped up with a sympathetic smile. "With your prowess in your clan's mind-body-swap techniques, and with Shikamaru's intellectual abilities, there's no doubt that you will-"

"No."

Both women were taken aback for a few moments. Both grew silent, and simply stared at her. Ino's mother took her hand back, if only to ball it in her skirts.

Ino's head was bowed, her hair hanging into her face. Her hands were trembling.

"Ino," Mrs. Yamanaka began.

"No." The girl slowly looked up, but her face was blank. Nothing except for the slight tremble of her lips gave away the rage she felt inside at the sudden news. "I will not."

Yoshino looked aghast while the brunette looked affronted.

"Whatever do you mean, 'no'?" Her mother demanded. "Are you not satisfied with being the heiress of a powerful clan? Are you not satisfied with the easy life we have given you?"

"Ino, please try to understand," Yoshino pleaded. "The king fears a fullscale war will sever our relations with Sand once and for all! Please, for the sake of your home and country, wouldn't you-"

"I SAID NO." She suddenly snapped, jumping to her feet. The others startled, gazing at her with wide eyes. Her eyes burned, and her chest was tight, but she stood over the two women and began to yell at the top of her lungs. "My duty has always been to become a wife and lead the clan with wisdom along with my husband! How dare you make this decision for me?! How dare you uproot the only life I've ever wanted?! My duty is not to be a soldier, it is to lead our family, with or without Shikamaru as my husband!"

"How spoilt must you be!" Her mother roared right back, getting up to stand in her daughter's face. "We have given you everything! An excellent education, fancy dresses, the finest of upbringings - how dare you disrespect us this way?"

"When it comes to serving a corrupt king or my family, my duty to my family comes first!" She screamed, her face red with anger. "When it comes to protecting this godforsaken land or my blood, my blood comes first!"

"You have no freedoms here!" Mrs. Yamanaka retorted right back. "In this day and age, you will do as his majesty commands! You are not free to choose your own path! You will live your life compliant without the fear of our family being purged, or you will die a traitor! We will all die as traitors!"

She stared into her mother's eyes, lips tightly shut for a good fifteen seconds as she breathed heavily.

Finally, when she'd begun to breathe normally again, she spoke calmly and quietly, a deadly whisper to force her mother and soon-to-be mother-in-law to listen.

"If I must die for anything, then I will die for what is good," she declared. "Tis better to die for truth than to live for dishonesty."


The girl abruptly woke with a gasp, sitting up and looking around wildly.

When she remembered where she was, she lay back down, closing her eyes.

It felt... so real, she thought to herself in anguish.

"Nightmare?"

She turned to see Temari coming back to her bedroll, an empathetic frown on her face.

She sighed quietly. "Yes."

"They come as commonly as there are blades in a field, I'm afraid," Temari said, sitting down beside her on her bedroll. "Was it of your life before?"

"My mother," Ino recalled with a saddened frown as she sat up. "It was of the last time I spoke to her before I fled."

"Ah." The sandy-haired girl gazed into the sky for a few moments, admiring the stars. "I assume it was an emotional experience."

"I... I rose my voice at her," she solemnly muttered. "I haven't screamed at her like that for as long as I can remember. But I was... just so angry..."

"I can relate," Temari nodded. "Sometimes it takes anger to force you to act - but when the heat of the moment dies, it will haunt you."

"What are yours of?" Ino suddenly asked.

Temari grew uncomfortable as she yanked out a blade of grass, "Mine... well, I suppose mine are more of the same," she answered slowly. "Usually, I dream of the last time I spoke to my brother."

"Your brother?" The girl asked.

"My baby brother," she recalled with a wry smile. "Heh... not so much of a baby anymore, is he... He will be the one to be king. I have already passed the crown to him, because I know I would serve him better as his second-in-command. Kankuro wasn't quite born to rule, either. He's content with being a chief poisons expert in our distant cousin's absence."

"Oh, yes, you are the princess of Sand," the younger blonde remembered. "My, uh, condolences."

"Don't give me that now," Temari snorted, with no heat behind her words. "I've accepted that I will probably never see home again. The thing that scares me more... is thinking of how I will die."

"You can't just dwell on that!" Ino insisted, laying a hand on her arm. "You must keep your chin up! Hope! Know that you will survive this!"

"I'm not saying I'm a pessimist, I'm saying that I've come to be at peace with the fact that I will die, no matter what happens." Temari remarked dryly. "I appreciate the concern, but believe me, I'm not worried about hope. I have hope that we will end this conflict."

"But what about your fears of death?" She asked.

"I don't fear death, I fear the road to it," the princess gently corrected. "I know that deep down, we all fear our own demise. I know that you yourself have given it thought more than once."

"That is true," Ino thought to herself with a nod. "I can't count the times on both hands that I've been afraid of the great hereafter."

"But even then, I give myself hope by telling myself that my death will spark a revolution." Temari continued, gazing wistfully at the stars. "Whether it be in battle or from my wounds, I know that I will have contributed to saving this land. I won't have failed my brothers."

She paused for a moment, as if thinking it over. Then, with a mischievous grin, she turned to Ino.

"Then again, perhaps it will spur my brothers to dethrone the damned Uchiha themselves," she chuckled. "Even if it comes to that, I know that all will be well."


A/N: I just had to give these two their own chapter. I know some of you have probably been wondering just where in the heck they went, and it gives me an excuse to show what happened right before Ino went to Shikamaru.

Tell me what you thought, and I'll see you next week!