this is super au and not canon compliant at all! i'm also too lazy to look things up so idk if the yamanaka family has a compound or not but i'm gonna say they do only Ino doesn't live in it because in a filler episode, Ino walks out of her house and it looks kinda apartmenty to me so I'm gonna say she lives in the building the flower shop is in, like her family owns all three floors or whatever and that's where she lives. i do this a lot because writing is more stressful when everything has to be "right." the world ino comes from isn't canon compliant, and more about it will come into focus over the course of the story. thank you all for reading i am very very happy about it! i really hope this doesn't disappoint you but if it does that's okay because this is the first time i've written in a while and i'm...kind of proud of myself. thank you so much for reading! no beta

Ino fic rec: Five Friends Ino Should Have Made During her Academy Years by gladdecease, hosted on ao3. short and sweet love it

song rec: Something to Believe In by Young the Giant

ASpHodeL

[cedar]
think
of
me

Ino shifts delicately in her seat, the movement practiced and minuscule. Still, Mother's face goes sharp, a glint in narrowed eyes. It's a warning and it makes Ino's skin crawl. This used to be a bonding exercise, training, even, but now she's uncomfortable and at a breakfast table with strangers, her every movement cataloged and her every absent gesture watched. It's unsettling. The sun isn't even up yet and already Ino feels she's doing everything wrong.

She's ten, a child. Children are told to be polite, to talk softly, or maybe not to talk at all. This might be to instill good manners. Maybe it's a social form of conditioning or maybe it's because children get damn annoying so it's for the best if they know to shut up and maybe later they'll be eating dinner with a killer and they're going to need to know not to hold their breath but instead to hold their tongue. It doesn't matter to her. Ino's never been told to be polite. She's never been scolded for rudeness.

Maybe that's what her mother would do if free to. Maybe if she'd been a civilian child with civilian parts made from civilian parents—maybe then they would tell her to be seen and not heard. As it stands, Ino's from a shinobi world. She isn't taught to be polite; she's taught to trick people. Your thoughts are a secret, her father used to say. The thoughts of others were, too, but those were secrets never safe from a Yamanaka. Guard them. She's taught to put up a good front, taught to be pretty and petty in the same breath. Ino's complimented not for her achievements, not for her grades, not for her sharp kunai or her even sharper mouth. Ino's pretty. Her talent is her face. Ino's worth is not and never will be in her power. Beauty. It's what Ino was built for. Her parents love her, sure, and they always have—they just don't respect her.

She's ten. Why would they?

"Sit up straight, Ino," her mother says and Ino does, spine pulling itself up like a climb. Her father goes to work earlier than Ino goes to school and everyone at the table is exhausted. Their breakfast ritual is one that continues out of pride, although none of the neighbors would know if they decided to eat half a bagel in the morning and regain at least an hour of sleep. It's as though they believe themselves to be royalty; in reality, the Yamanaka are a minor clan and Ino thinks it's ridiculous.

But appearances, appearances—these are Ino's trade. This is what they give her.

She used to take pride in it, too. She'd walk into the academy, eyes bright, feeling as though she'd left breakfast a princess. It seems idiotic, now. It seems tiresome. She needs to be training and fighting and reading, ripping open library books so harshly there's a half-minded fear they'll tear. She doesn't need to be holding a small rice bowl in front of her, delicately bringing bite after bite up in wooden chopsticks.

Yes, yes, she knows—you must sit up straight and you must dress nicely and you must eat with the proper utensils and arrange the flowers as asked and pull your hair from your face and you must, must, must be good (on the outside, anyway—the inside doesn't really matter much). But she doesn't feel like she has the time and maybe she doesn't.

Father is good at it—very good. He eats like a civilian, even though he comes from shinobi blood both ways. Mother isn't a ninja, so her refined, tiny bites aren't as impressive. Father, though, eats like a nobleman. He eats like a thin-faced narrow-eyed nobleman.

Ino sets her empty bowl back to the wooden tabletop, chopsticks going horizontally on top. "May I be excused?" she asks, and the sun is starting to peek into the open kitchen window. Father glances up from his gyoza.

Her mother raises one delicate eyebrow. The image sends bile up her mouth, and she swallows painfully. Ino's mother is dead. This woman terrifies her. "You shouldn't eat so quickly, Ino," she chides. Her light brown hair is down around her shoulders; her eyes are brown, too, but so dark they almost appear red. Ino wasn't there when Sasuke killed her. She'd been somewhere in Rice Country, seventeen and an idiot, when Sasuke came back to Konoha and set it to burn. Ino wasn't there when he killed her, so when she remembers her mother all she sees is the corpse, the aftermath, the blood on her dress and her glazed eyes and the way her skin was a bit grey.

"I've got a lot of things to do, you know," Ino says.

"Oh?" says Mother, skin healthy and lips pulled into a thin line. "Such as?"

"Study," she says, feeling patronized and dumb and she isn't doing anything right. She's here, somehow, sent her soul into Madara's world-warping-time-mapping eyes and popped out the other side, and she's going to save her parents, but what good is saving their lives if they lose their only daughter? Ino's not the same, not right, not the way she was, and the little girl dead in the sand within Ino's mind proves it. She isn't acting right, isn't playing this right. "I'm going to pick out a sword from upstairs."

Father's interest visibly rises, his eyes going from his plate to Ino's face. They've got the same eyes, the same hair. Ino's a Yamanaka. But there's a bit that's off to the reflection. Ino's younger, and her jaw is softer, her eyes free of wrinkles and just a bit more feminine, almost cat-like. Her hair is paler, shorter. "I don't remember hearing about this," he says. They don't live in the clan compound. There isn't a Yamanaka who does, now. It's a museum. They live above the flower shop her mother owned before marrying Inoichi, and upstairs is where Father keeps his share of Yamanaka relics. Her clan is scattered across Konoha, each with their own portion of old arrows and dusty books.

"I graduate in two years," Ino says, shrugging. "I want one."

"A sword?" Her mother looks appalled, and as though she was processing before managing to come up with a response. "Ino, you're ten; that's insanity!"

(Seven years from now and six years ago the war's only been going strong for two months before it became clear that insanity wasn't the monogamous type. It's a homewrecker, and a lot of people got smashed, so some Iwa nin were starting psychological help. They'd asked Ino to help, to dig around inside the brains of her allies and pull them back together. The mental health support system of shinobi is notoriously bad but no one's ever minded before. Being crazy is part of the kick. It's part of the rush. No sane person would find this life bearable much less enjoyable and Ino enjoyed it quite a bit. She's never thought of herself as the type of girl to need therapy. Yoga wasn't gonna make her better. A gratitude journal wasn't gonna cure her.

She stood just close enough to keep an eye on them, watching the shinobi go in and out, slumping against the wooden pole of a tent, eyes scanning the rocky hills, Sakura absent-mindedly healing the small cuts lining Ino's cheeks. The short bumps in the horizon felt like mountains. Ino missed her trees, missed the green of it.

"Bet the Iwa nin feel right at home," Ino muttered, one foot kicking at the ground. Her eyes were narrowed, staring down the ninja gravitating towards the therapy tent. "Down in the fucking dirt, I mean."

"Ino," Sakura warned, not really meaning it, and Ino made a noise that could be taken as an apology. Something about the optimism made Ino feel like screaming. How like Iwa nin—not everyone can be fixed. Ino knew that. They should, too.

Ino's a ninja, and she's had her fair share of trysts with insanity.

She'd always been the dominant one, always been the one to take someone's hand and pull them to the wild, but when her mind fled her, the wild was the one to take Ino to bed instead of the other way around. It curled around her when there was just a hint of alcohol to her breath and tempted her into tugging another cigarette out of her pocket. Her hands shook and her lips stung and her hair's messy and it got her. Even if it caught her by surprise, she was still the one trapped, still the prey to its predator.

Ino wanted to say she wore her mania like a dress. She wanted to say she danced with it, free and feral and laughing loud enough to blind her. She wanted to say she owned this side to her, wanted to say she could smile even when her head's heedy with dementia.

She couldn't. It'd be a lie.

Insanity took her, undomesticated and disorderly—and when it's done, it left her boiling and furious and spitting blood. It slipped under her skin and clawed at her mouth until she couldn't breathe.

"Ino," Sakura said, her eyes soft and her hands softer. One finger brushed against Ino's jaw, dangerously close to the edge of her lip, and Ino glanced over at Sakura's face, eyes gleaming. Sakura's eyes were darker, it seemed like. War must've stained them. Sakura looked to the tent pointedly. "You should go."

Ino closed her eyes. Leaned her cheek into Sakura's hand. "You're a good friend," she said.

"Ino—"

"But I'm not going."

"Ino."

"I'm not!" Ino shrugged Sakura away, face twisting because she wasn't weak and she didn't need help and Sakura should know that. "I'm fine," she growled. The last time someone tried to fix her they went into her head and by the end she had to be gagged to stop the screaming. No one can be fixed.

"They might help you." A pause, and then, "It's okay to need help."

Ino bristled.

They can't fix me I'm not broken who do you think I am)

Ino blinks and she's ten again.

Inoichi looks at her fondly, like he's humoring her, like this is one of her childish whims that won't last a day. It's true that from the beginning, from the moment following her conception, Ino was going to be a shinobi. The shinobi system is all about supply and demand, but, like most things, the supply depends on the audience. Sometimes someone needs an army. But Ino has never been meant to be that kind. Ino isn't a knife. She is a mirror. That is her strength. She's meant as a facade.

"I won't be dumb with it," Ino presses, trying to reach into herself, dig up the girl who screamed for months before falling apart under Ino's weight. "I promise. You won't even have to really spend time teaching me how to use it. I have teachers and the library."

Ino's vain. She's selfish. Her parents raised her like that. She knows they aren't attractive traits.

Quite frankly, she doesn't care. She might not be special or kind, might not be good. That's okay. There's a kind of dignity to it, a kind of honor in sitting pretty. Even to the end, even to the blade in her throat and the blood drying sticky on her skin, Ino was gorgeous. There's a kind of pride in it. She's never tried to be how she is. She's been gently corralled here and now she can't help herself. Ino's been molded to want.

But what?

That's where things shift.

What does Yamanaka Ino want?

And how, Ino asks herself, can she get it?

Inoichi laughs. It's too natural. The sound isn't harsh or grated. Ino hasn't heard a laugh like that in years. It is more frightening and eerie than she can describe.

"I've never been able to stop you, Ino." He's smiling at her. Ino forces a similar expression to emerge. "Make sure you don't stab anyone, alright?"

Ino nods and tries to take the tension from her bones. Her mother is tight-lipped now. Acknowledging the world of shinobi, that Ino is a shinobi, swords and jutsu and training—these things make her uncomfortable. She doesn't think it's lady-like. Ino and her once bonded often over their shared love of flowers. It was the only time Ino was allowed to speak freely, hands dirty in the back of the flower shop, grinning over at her mother and potting something beautiful, something alive. Ino loves her flowers. She loves them more than she can explain. They are beautiful and alive and the only thing in this world Ino knows. "Breakfast was wonderful," Ino tells her, as an apology.

Mother doesn't look up.

…

She actually ends up taking something closer to a knife.

It's a tanto, as long as her forearm and shiny enough to gleam a bit. Embarrassingly, Ino couldn't much lift her original pick. It was just a ninjato, but she'd been barely able to get it off the ground. She'd started using short swords after she'd pulled Sai's tanto off his dead body but no one's dead yet and she thought she could use something different. But she couldn't lift it so she's alive and has a tanto. It made her feel shriveled and weak and small, but the shorter blade had always seemed more her style anyway.

("You're pathetic," Ino can imagine her old body saying to her, beautiful and regal and cruel. She can imagine her own face, disappointed and noble and it makes her feel so, so small.)

She's sitting on a school bench, Sakura to her right and a window to her left, and Khori-san is talking about elemental theory and Ino's thinking about failure. Uchiha Itachi, ANBU captain by twelve. Orochimaru of the Sannin, first shinobi in the Konoha bingo book to have a flee-on-sight order. Namikaze Minato, genius and the Hokage and the one who won the third war. Hatake Kakashi—

Sakura slides a piece of paper across the desk. Are you okay? the paper says. Ino looks at Sakura and tries her best smile.

It goes like this: they've been teaching her how to attack her friends for years, been putting her against them with knives and fists. This village has placed her in a classroom of children and reminded her that it's a competition, that she has to work for it, that she's gotta beg like a stray dog and be twice as feral.

It goes like this: Ino's smart and she's fast and she's strong and her scores—both practical and written—have never been better and Ino feels nothing. She is dead and she feels nothing.

It goes like this: Sakura smiles back and something inside Ino can breathe again.

(kill your enemies kill your allies kill yourself)

Yamanaka Ino is a ghost and she knows this.

She can remember someone—a girl a woman a weapon—and it's familiar the way an old song would be. She can remember it, can practically feel it on her skin but. She doesn't know who that person is. Ino doesn't know who she is. She's ten years old and she hates this, she hates giving up, hates getting lost to the wake of a life she's never lived. She has to be awake now. She wants to live. Yamanaka Ino gets what she wants.

There are traits she can recall, little things she knows. Ino is loud. Ino is brave. Ino's wild and vain, selfish and childish. Ino is unapologetic and uncaring and bright enough to blind you. She's a fire, and when the things, when people, around her go up in flames, it's their own fault for being near enough to burn.

She starts to tap her heel against the floor. Sakura shifts her notebook a bit, and Ino realizes she's offering it for copy; Ino's own notebook is open to a blank page. There are notes in someone else's handwriting lazily spilling through the first half of it. Her hand picks up a pencil without her direct order and starts to write down Sakura's words, her handwriting unpracticed and just two mistakes from ugly. When she bends closer to the tabletop, the short sword pressed to her lower back shifts at the movement.

(There's a girl older than her with a knife she stole from a dead man fighting a war.

Ino's in a classroom, aching from discomfort.)

She's a ghost and she knows this.

Her foot keeps tapping, like a routine, against the wooden tiled floor, her toes curling inside her shoes and the winter air escaping through the walls to inch along her spine. Ino eyes leave Sakura's neat rows of words to see the floor; she refocuses, hand moving again. Her ponytail used to spill all the way down to it—but she doesn't have a ponytail. Her hair has never been long enough.

She wants, suddenly, desperately, for the weight of it. Her hair's short, choppy, longer than Sakura's by less than an inch. Khori pauses in her lecture, saying, "Are there any questions?" and Ino has none. Her foot startles into silence when Khori-san looks at her and says, "What about you, Ino? Do you have any questions?"

The board is smeared in chalk, nature cycles drawn prettily over it and diagrams of the chakra centers, too, and lists of different chakra types and the things associated with it, with forms and stars and Konoha's most famous dead people. "Oh," Ino says. "Yes. Are… Are physical and spiritual chakra always in equal measure?"

Khori's eyes glitter. "A good question," she allows, and the words spill from her mouth too fast for Ino to put effort into catching. It aches to swallow her pride like this, to pretend she's made a mistake when she's the only one doing anything right. The day spills over into an ending, and Ino stays after school to sit in on the kenjutsu club, watching their forms and wondering who she would have been if her swordmaster had been someone other than the fear of death. The instructor, Gekkou Hayate, is a dead man, but watching him lead children through kenjutsu is like watching the moon rise in a starlit sky.

Her own memories of muscle and movement were always rushing, panicking, blades meeting with the same grace all of her movements hold but with none of the knowledge she sees here.

"Are you new?"

Ino jumps, her senses exploding at the fear, and every chakra in the room stands in stark color to her (she's scanning through them ally-ally-ally) and there's no threat. Ino's just paranoid and out of practice and ten. The girl who'd spoken laughs.

"Sorry to scare you," she says. It makes shame coil around Ino as though in preparation to strike. "I'm Tenten. Do you want to join in?"

Tenten. She's a dead girl. Ino looks up and finds Hayate watching the two of them, his face something similar to friendly. "Yeah," Ino says. She stands, letting Tenten put a weapon into her hands and feeling no shame over the way her arms shake from the weight. Hayate smiles. "Yes, yeah," Ino says again. Her arms ache before Hayate shows her the katas.

(Later, bruised and matched with a wooden practice ninjato she can lift, Ino comes home several hours after she was expected. "You're dirty," her dad laughs, scuffing the back of her head with his palm. Her hair falls in her face from the movement.

I don't want you to die, Ino thinks. "I don't think I'm going to use this," she says, holding the tanto out to him. He smiles because he had expected as much and takes it from her, lifting it as though to test what about it had failed to maintain her attention. "I'm sorry," she says.

He frowns at her. "Don't be. Wash up for dinner, okay? You'd give your mother a heart attack.")

…

"You're like a Ungaikyo," she murmurs, the words slipping free before she can catch them. She leans over the countertop, looking harder into the glass. The house is silent, the village at rest, the moon above them and not colored red from Madara's anger. A possessed mirror. It's not perfect—Ino's mirror is fine. It is her reflection that's warped. But, then, the girl in the mirror isn't a demon at all. She's just a girl, and Ino's the one who possessed her. A coolness settles over her limbs. She is here, alive. There's a world to save, alive. Naruto is alive. Sakura is alive. Her parents are alive. They are all here, alive. What's wrong?

They are all here, alive. Ino is the one who doesn't fit.

Ino is the one who leaves the breakfast table early, has a closer bond with her houseplants than with her peers. She'd been a popular girl before—before. Now she speaks to Sakura and to her teachers when prompted and some sparse, painful lines to her parents.

She misses them. She'd thought somehow they would be the way she remembered them, but her friends are ten and Asuma has never even met her.

She misses Sakura the same way some people miss their lost limbs; deeply and intensely and sometimes so strongly they forget anything is missing at all and then, when the thick absence hits her, the realization attacks all over again. Fear has lived with Ino like an animate thing and that doesn't go away. Everyone is alive but not the way they were and it doesn't go away.

She's tired. She doesn't want to argue anymore, doesn't want to fight. Something hot stings behind Ino's eyes, something that might be able to become tears if she were to let it, and she wants to. She wants to be able to cry, wants to hide behind her smaller body and let herself cry, alone in the bathroom with the demon she became.

But Ino isn't a little girl anymore. It's all different now. Everything's different. She doesn't have time for tears. She can't pretend she deserves the luxury. This body is a child. She is not. Yamanaka Ino's been through war.

Everyone's alive. It's a statement, a fact, and it no longer feels like an accusation. Ino's disgust with herself goes beyond the emotions she used to let rule her. "I need to be better," she says and she hates that. She hates hearing that. She's always gonna hate hearing that. She opens her eyes again, looking into the mirror; the girl living inside Ino's reflection stares hard, looking back at her like she wants to rip her apart. "You need to be better," she says again, her voice old with something Ino doesn't want to see. The words cut like glass when they wiggle from her mouth.

Her reflection scowls.

Her own image becomes too much and Ino shifts, eyes landing on the smooth curve of the sink. She needs to be better. It isn't about wanting or trying. She wants it, she'll do it; she's Yamanaka Ino. Madara destroys Konoha, leads an army into her village and lets Uchiha Sasuke kill her parents as an afterthought, cracks into the earth and parts the sea, rips open gods and monsters and pulls the sky apart. She was a girl, then, and she couldn't stop him. He had over half the continent under control before she grew up and by then it was too late.

(She thinks of Naruto's blood on her hands, of clinging to him even as his heart stopped because that was all she had left of Konoha. She thinks of run, Ino and her own list of victims and the way sometimes when Madara made his army march she could recognize the people in it. She thinks of Sakura's cold hands and Chouji's limp form, dead and pinning her to the grass, and of Asuma blessedly dying before he had to watch Kurenai follow him.

She thinks of a world torn wide open, of the way she'd fallen into the abyss.)

I want it, I'll do it.

"I need to be better," she breathes, and she means it.

…

Meaning things and doing them turn out to be entirely different animals to tame so the year passes and Ino is a flower and a blade.

(It's only a spar but Sasuke's ten and he isn't pulling his punches; Ino kicks his feet out from under him and leans over his body as though it's already dead, a kunai held to his neck and an emptiness to her eyes.)

It goes with reading, with a flashlight aimed on textbooks only jounin have access to and with torn pages and a hand copying words she shouldn't understand at a speed she's barely capable of, with hiding and going to the attic, digging through weapons and family histories and special techniques she never heard of because her father died and Konoha was destroyed in the same day and she's never wanted something so badly as she wants this. It goes with Hayate, with kenjutsu club, with tea ceremonies and imagining staring at a victim over a cup of poison that tastes sweet as honey.

(Their parents had grouped them all together, her and Chouji and Shikamaru and she loved them. She'd loved them. They were her family after her family died and her friends before she'd known what friendship was and their parents had quite literally planned their pregnancies; she was born September 23, Shikamaru a day before that, and even though Chouji was born in May, it was all always a plan and she was always meant to work with them. But she can't work with them. She has to keep an eye on Sasuke and that means team seven.

"Father," she says, blandly, bluntly. Shikaku turns to look at her and she cannot meet his eyes or even acknowledge him at all. "I refuse to spend time with these two."

"Ino, you've been playing with them since you were born," Inoichi tells her, laughing. He leans down close, winks. "You might even be on the same genin team with them."

"I would rather die," she says and she doesn't mean it but it sounds like she does enough for him to pause and by the end of the evening she's gotten into a physical fight with Shikamaru and a one sided verbal one with Chouji and her father takes her home looking at her like he doesn't know her and maybe he doesn't. In the doorway of the flower shop, she says, "If they're on my genin team, I'll retire."

She hates herself.

Her father's horrified by her. Her mother is delighted by the prospect.)

It goes by with jutsu she doesn't have the capacity for, with water walking and knife throwing and low planks and desperation, her hands going through signs to techniques she can't do yet, going faster and faster and faster her fingers hurt more than she can describe earth release fire release water release her hand lights up with green and her entire body shakes with exhaustion she goes faster her hands are so tired her wrist aching from the writing and the copying her arms burning from the sets of positions she goes through with the ninjato she'd taken from the attic left swing right block again and she doesn't have to copy off Sasuke or Sakura in class. She knows everything it feels like. There are still tendrils on people from the way she used to let entire forces communicate in her head on the battlefield and if she pulls hard enough—

(Sakura's right next to her and Ino tugs open the girl's mind like it's a dog door and she can see everything that Sakura is everything that Sakura has everything Sakura has done and it isn't her Sakura. Ino quietly writes down on her test sheet that no, Uzumaki Mito was not considered a sealing prodigy, as she'd been trained since birth. However, she was surely the master of her time.

This isn't her Sakura. This isn't her life.)

It goes by with taijutsu class and blocking a punch Naruto barely manages to throw, her forearm definitely bruised but then she always is it goes by with sweeping his feet from under him it goes with practicing her hand seals feeling the chakra inside her as though it is a separate entity lodged under her skin like a sliver, hidden down in the muscle in the bone. She feels her own energy wondering if it belongs to her or if the little girl still has a sharp hold even now and in genjutsu classes that only teach her how to dispel them, being told over and over and over again that being trapped in a genjutsu isn't like being a dream, Ino, it's darker than that, this is the sign to release it, okay?

(In kunoichi classes Ino stares at the flowers she is meant to arrange. She looks at their cut ends, floating without roots, dying. She holds tea ceremonies with her face curved into a smile she does not feel. It seems very meaningless, now, but then, everything does.)

The year goes by like this: Ino trains and she screams and she tests well and does her homework and every day after school she spends hours with her ninjato and late into the night she's silent along the walls of the village library and she punches Chouji in the face and Sakura declares she's in love with Uchiha Sasuke and Ino tells her she's disgusted by it but will graciously allow Sakura to remain her best friend and Naruto keeps looking at her and all of Ino inside and out is constantly aching and simultaneously feeling nothing at all.

It goes like this: She forgets how to smile with kindness and learns only to bare her teeth.

The months slip by the weeks pass and Sakura complains that Ino is boring, that she spends all her time practicing and trying and fighting and where was the girl who used to love climbing trees and watching Princess Gale films? The days escape her and she's telling Sakura to spar with her she's telling Sakura to join her after school she's telling Sakura to eat more and she's avoiding her parents she's avoiding Naruto she's avoiding Shikamaru and Chouji and Sakura smiles and shakes her head no. The days end and end and end and end and end and end and Ino is top of her class, top of these children, and she's laughing, crying, mind heavy and heart heavier and still beautiful.

The mornings pass the sun rises and rises and rises and her hair is long, long, long.

The year passes and she is eleven. The year passes and she is twelve. The year passes and the year passes and she is twelve and Iruka says, "Alright! The graduation exam is in a week! This is crunch time, guys!" and she smiles.

(Yamanaka Ino is a ghost and she knows this.)

…

The teams aren't random; they are calculated. Ino was destined for the Ino-Shika-Cho take two when she was birthed the day after Shikamaru. Civilian teams are often handled by teachers, placed together to compliment both personality and skill, but most civilians either get pushed into the genin corps or retire and return to their civilian lives with a funny story to tell at the bar about how they were "almost ninja," so close to heroism.

She tosses a kunai, her form perfect, her hand practiced. She misses.

Ino, though? Her team isn't going to be put together by Iruka. She's in a class of clan heirs. Clan heirs don't retire. They sometimes end up in the genin corps, but they don't retire. The Hokage deals with her team with input from her father, from the clan heads, maybe even the council. When Ino got put with Asuma and Shikamaru and Chouji it wasn't about her grades or being the top female student. It was about her father, and Shikaku, and Chouza.

She throws another kunai. It lodges in the wood, a smudge off center from the target she'd painted. Her lip curls into what could become a snarl.

She can imagine the Hokage, sitting at a big desk in a big room and unaware that he is going to die. No, Ino corrects. Aware of his own mortality—merely unaware of the proximity. She can see him "hmm"ing, pushing back the pages that describe her attacks on Shikamaru and Chouji's disappointment in her cruelty. He frowns, not surprised she's a brat but a bit weary all the same. He's flipping through their school files, notes from council members and clans splayed across his desk, possible jounin tucked into a pile. Sakura must be in the civilian candidate pile, already dismissed. Maybe Naruto's attachment would pull her into a team meant for survival; maybe not.

Ino throws again. This time, it hits dead center. The kunai she throws after clangs against it, aimed for the center as well, and then falls silent to the grass. She starts a slow journey to claim them, pushing her hair from her face.

In her head, the Hokage frowns down at his desk. He's sorting them into teams, the complaints of a painful number of people echoing in his thoughts. She imagines her father still pushing for Ino-Shika-Cho and the Hokage shaking his head. She's made that combo look impossible. He's looking at Naruto's file, fondly, looking over the list of his vandalism and disappointing grades. He's a good boy, he says, maybe to no one or maybe to a chuunin working in the office and in her head it's Iruka.

I know, Iruka will agree, resigned.

The Hokage will keep sorting the files around, his frown thoughtful, and of course it'll eventually come down to Sakura and Sasuke and Naruto, the way it always has, and he'll be thinking to himself, well, now there's an idea, and he'll pull at Kakashi from the jounin pile, examining and remembering and of course of course what an idea he'll think, former ANBU turned genin sensei what an idea, and he'll be watching those pieces fall into place and Sakura and Sasuke and Naruto don't have clan heads to interfere and the Hokage will think—

"Ino!"

She's so startled she drops a kunai. It lands point down into the dirt, missing her toes by probably less than an inch.

"Come inside! It's time for dinner!"

Ino gravitates quickly to the backdoor, kunai stored safely in the pouch on her hip. Inoichi smiles at her from the doorway, one hand coming up to ruffle her hair when she walks in. It's longer, now, down around her shoulders, snaking halfway down her spine. It isn't long enough. "Graduation tomorrow," Father says, his smile sparking with pride.

Ino copies his smile. "I know," she says.

Mother glances up, the table nearly set. She looks disappointed. She always looks disappointed and it's because of Ino. Ino isn't the daughter she should be, isn't the girl she was at twelve. She isn't the daughter she used to be. She used to be preening and beautiful; her mother's pretty bird, running the flower shop with genuine affection and holding tea ceremonies in her free time. Now she runs laps before breakfast, leaves breakfast early to add insult to injury, carries a curved blade on her back, wears her hair long and often up, and she is not what Mother wants. Ino's not who she used to be. She hasn't allowed her mother to take any of her time in years. "Change your clothes before dinner," Mother says.

"Of course," Ino says. In her head, the Hokage leans down over the three files—Sakura Sasuke Naruto—and in his focus, his elbow slips just a little, and Ino's file goes down, underneath the civilian ones, forgotten.