By: Kaara.
Genre: Angst/Romance.
Disclaimer: All the Naruto characters belongs to Kishimoro-sensei. Although they wanted to be mine, the law cruelly states otherwise.
Warning: Characters' death. Angsting. OOCness, because of the major change in time frame.
Set in the midst of war.
xxx
Love's Divine
xxx
He found her the day before the Summer Festival.
She was sitting on the ledge of the opened window in her bedroom, looking down at the bustling crowd down below. There was a faint trace of smoke in the air and he noticed an ashtray full of cigarette butts besides her. There was a half-finished cigarette dangling from her slender fingers, the red tip burning brightly when she took a long drag. The bed looked as though nobody slept on it last night and he suspected that he was right in that particular deduction from the state of her pale golden hair; untied and unkempt. Her blue shirt and dark jeans were badly creased. She barely acknowledged his presence, except for a tired glance towards the doorway. Towards him.
"I didn't know that you smoked," Naruto remarked carelessly, regarding the shadow of a remarkably strong woman he thought he knew. He took a step inside the bleak room. Several lonely rays of sunlight impaled the floor from what little space she allowed open, particles of dust rising from the parqueted surface.
"You know nothing about me then."
He took another step. And stared at the bones jutting from underneath the pallid skin of her shoulder. "It's not good for your health."
Ino snorted. "Tell Asuma that."
"And we all know what happened to him," the young man softly said, taking in the details of the sparsely decorated room. The rocking chair looked that it was in desperate need of a paint job.
As well as everything else inside there.
"At least he didn't get his head busted in the war," came the reply, laced with an indiscernable tinge of bitterness. She shifted slightly, before inhaling on the nicotine stick deeply. "You left him those flowers, didn't you?"
Naruto lifted his eyes from his brief examination of the cracks on the floor and knitted his brows at the question. "How'd you know that?"
"Elimination process," there was dark amusement flavouring her voice. "Kurenai's dead, Chouji's missing, Shikamaru would just say that it's too troublesome and I always bring tulips for Asuma." She tilted her head and spared him a small grin. "Besides, you're the only one who bought two dozens of sunflowers from our shop last week. It's not that hard to piece together."
"Tsunade told me that the cancer got him when I came back from the Mist," he eyed the lines of despair that marred her face and felt a deep ache throbbing somewhere in his chest. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
He wanted to say that it was not only for Asuma's unfortunate demise, but the words died at the tip of his tongue. Instead, he averted his eyes from Ino and regarded a collage of fading photographs pinned onto the wall. He could see Iruka-sensei smiling at him with a hand ruffling Konohamaru's hair. Shikamaru smirking at Chouji from across a go board. A widely grinning Asuma and Team Ten when Ino and Chouji finally made chuunins. Memories from time immemorial. There was an empty space in between pictures of laughing faces, and somehow, Naruto knew who was missing. He surprised himself when he felt a flare of jealousy at the thought. Would anyone missed him that much if he died? Would there be a girl mourning for him like Ino was doing?
No.
No one.
Hyuuga fucking Neji just got lucky.
"I heard you applied for ANBU."
He could see the corner of Ino's lips stretched into a humourless smile. "Words got around fast in the department, isn't it?"
"Walls have ears, I suppose," he retorted, carefully watching her reaction. Or rather, the lack of it. "Why?"
"I'm qualified," her reply was accompanied with an indifferent shrug. She raised the cigarette to her lips and took another long drag.
Naruto shook his head as Ino puffed out columns of greyish white smoke. "What will happen to Team Ten?"
"Shikamaru's been appointed the Head for Intelligence yesterday and Enrai..." he saw something flickered in her eyes; desperation. And deep sorrow. "She's dead. Some Sound jounins caught up on her at the border when she went on a routine investigation. So I guess she wouldn't have any problem with me breaking up the team."
He mentally winced at the tone of her voice.
Too much death, too close to her.
A sudden gust of wind made Ino's hair whipped around her face, erratic strands of bleached gold parting to reveal a scar running almost halfway across the back of her neck, the ruined flesh a stark contrast against her pale skin. She had probably noticed him staring at the scar, as she gently placed a hand over it and stared at him from her comfortable position. There was an unspoken agreement reached upon eye-contact; he was in no place to ask about the mark. He understood the message perhaps too perfectly. He was a stranger in her eyes. Ino raked her hair into place with her fingers; her touch lingered for an extra second on the covered scar, before turning her attention back to the darkening sky. It seemed as though he had lost her yet again to something that only she could see and hear and touch and feel. Something divine.
He thought that he had changed throughout the years.
He had seen his friends changing too, maturing.
But this young woman before him...
This woman was not Yamanaka Ino.
Not the Ino that he remembered.
How many years have passed since their genin days?
Naruto closed his eyes, the ache in his chest intensifying with each second that he spent being with the other blonde. Pain. Suffering. Loss. Similarities that they shared. It was as if he was staring at his own reflection, as if he was back in his apartment with its cracked mirror and bottles of painkillers. Alone, always alone. There were the occasional one night stands, but that only made him felt more lonely afterwards, sharing his bed with someone whose face and name he would forget the next day. He took another step forward, eyes locked on the frail figure lounging against the window pane. He wondered if she felt cold at night too, like he did. Wondered if she had lived with the shadows all these years, instead of sunshine. If she was still living with the ghost of the past. If she had cried at night, dreaming about what Death had taken from her.
Or if she was also slowly drowning...
Like him.
Suffocating.
Like him.
She didn't even look up when he stood silently besides her. Didn't even express an ounce of surprise when he touched her jaw, tilting her face towards him. There was resignation in her grey blue eyes, acceptance of what reality had done for her. To her. Gone was the lively twinkles that he usually associated with her presence. Gone was the loudmouthed, radiant girl that he had left behind all those years. Replaced by an empty, broken shell of a human. He didn't even shatter her cool composure when he wordlessly pressed his lips against her, tasting the frighteningly cold sensation that was uniquely Ino.
Cold against cold.
Terrifying.
"What was that for?" she asked once he withdrew, eyeing him with no amount of emotion.
He willed a small smile to decorate his face. "Just returning the favour."
She was still sitting on the ledge when he left her.
Staring out of the window.
xxx
They found her four days after her promotion.
He had looked down at the motionless beautiful face, caked with dried blood and mud, and wondered if she was finally at peace. Glazed, lifeless grey blue eyes looked up at him from sunken face. He knelt down and slowly traced a hand across her still face, brushing off dirt and leaves from her damp hair. Her skin felt oddly cold underneath his fingers, though it made little difference compared to when she was still breathing. He dare not call her alive before; some people are dead even before their hearts have stopped beating. She was one of them. He slowly turned her around and undid the knot of head protecter around her narrow waist, sliding the piece of clothed metal into one of the compartments of his vest. The dog tag was next, followed by her cracked vixen mask. Carefully, he laid her back onto the muddy ground and stood up.
He remembered the taste of her lips against his as he watched the flames angrily consumed her.
And the smile etched on her lips when he first found her mangled body amidst the dead.
END
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Kaara