hi angels. i'm really unhappy with this chapter tbh but at least I did something I guess ? Let me know what you think about it!

Ino fic rec: It's Complicated by Killaurey. Already did a fic rec by them but it's a good fic

Song rec: Modern Jesus by Portugal. The Man

asPhoDEl

[begonia]
misfortune
will
follow

Maybe it's just like before, Ino thinks, watching Naruto grumble and Sakura sit, and nothing will have changed at all: the days will pass and they'll pass and she has library clearance now, at least. She imagines nothing will change at all. She will consume training and reading and power the way she consumes everything—greedily and quickly and without mercy. The d-ranks will be time consuming, sure, but at night, the flower shop will be empty but for the life she's always loved, and Ino will read and she'll learn and practice and become.

Become what? Learn what?

Ino has already been a destroyer. She has already been a thief, a killer, a savior, a girl. Who must she be? None of her has ever been able to change the world. What must she be?

(Maybe he was a monster and she was an idiot and everyone else was right. But he was the only thing Ino had ever thought could change this world.)

Ino slides into kata second, position three, ninjato in front of her, the metal reflecting her eyes back at her, glossy. She looks somewhere close to angry. Her sandal catches a bit on the uneven ground when she moves on it. This does not hinder her.

The field is lit by sun, a warm wind washing over the grass, and Ino feels if she had the time she would be content to lay in the middle of it until her body withered and died. It has been silent for a bit longer than ten minutes, Yuugao looking out across the trees and Sakura with her knees pulled up to her chest, one foot tapping. It's comfortable, if strange, and as Ino sheathes her ninjato and sinks down next to Sakura, Naruto decides abruptly to break it. "Well?" he barks, arms waving; he stomps a foot, face flashing with red. It's childish and Ino hates herself for smiling at it, hates herself for being endeared. "What are we waiting for?"

Sakura, predictably, is annoyed by this statement, face flushing in her own anger. They're both twelve and Ino can't fully remember anymore the last time she saw them looking this way. Naruto's face flushes. When was he last genuine and child-like? She finds no images come to mind.

This Naruto is not her Naruto, after all. The Naruto she knows is dead.

"Shut up, Naruto!" Sakura rises to her feet as well, then, completely baited. "Yuugao-sensei is obviously waiting for something—"

Yuugao raises a hand. Sakura goes silent, red with shame, now, melting back into a seated position. "I've decided," she says. There's barely any tonal inflection. It's as though she truly has no opinion on her words. Who was she? Was she in ANBU? Ino can't remember. The war that once seemed so visceral, so painful behind her eyelids and aching in flashing colors—it has faded from her as though stolen. Naruto wiggles anxiously beside her, his knee brushing hers. Sakura shares his feelings, her mind shaking from nervousness.

The Sakura she knew—Ino tries to picture her. She knew that girl better than she knew her own reflection. She knew her. She did. What did she look like?

No image comes straight to mind. It is a vague form, short cut pink hair and green eyes in a blurring pale face. The details she tries to add don't feel right. Was there dirt in her hair? Did she have any scars on her face? Ino adds one just below her left eye, a tiny imperfection. It's the tiny things that make someone real, the small flaws and the delicate lines of their hands, often ignored and pieced together to make someone. This is reality—flawed and intricate and easily broken. The Sakura she knew is gone. Ino no longer knows for certain if she is capable of recalling her face.

The realization chills her.

Ino was wrong before when she thought Sakura was all she had in this world. The people she knew won't be replaced by them. She has nothing here. She won't have anything here. She won't allow it. She won't let Sakura be forgotten and Ino is the only one aware she ever existed.

"You three will be my students," Yuugao decrees. Her voice is that of a judge.

"Weren't we already?" Sakura asks, timid. She wrings her hands a bit restlessly. Naruto nods in frantically enthusiastic agreement. It lends Sakura enough strength to continue. "Iruka-sensei said—"

"Incorrect." Her voice is like a knife. Sakura flinches. "Iruka is no longer your teacher. The information he gave you was intentionally misleading. A jounin sensei has the authority to disband a genin team at any time."

"A-any time?" Naruto's back on his feet instantly, forgetting Yuugao's authority despite her tone. "Are you going to disband us?"

"I could," Yuugao corrects. "That doesn't necessarily mean I will." Her face is mildly contemplative. Ino almost can't stand it. She thought she knew everything, thought her future gave her the advantage, but she doesn't know anything about this woman. She knows her hair is purple and she is a ninja and she dies. Anyone who looked at her could know that. "It is typical to perform a test on new genin to determine their worth. I have no doubt I could give you three a crossword as my exam and would still receive failure."

Despite herself, Ino's cheeks go hot with embarrassment. All her life she's been considered lesser and all her life it has been true. She knows what Yuugao sees when she looks at Ino—a pretty face. Ino stands, too, then, chin up. "This is an insult," she hears herself say. "To hold no exam—"

"There is an exam," Yuugao says. Her expressions, her posture, her words—all are careful and chosen. Not a movement is a waste. The three of them make horrible soldiers. Sakura is too easily irritated to make a perfect subordinate and Naruto is plainly disrespectful. Ino wonders what she would say about herself were she someone else. "Every moment in my company is an exam. There are mistakes I will not forgive. Should you make any—" She looks from Naruto to Sakura and then her eyes meet Ino's and it's as though nothing in the world exists except those eyes. Something crawls along the track of her spine. "—then team seven will be disbanded on my command, and the three of you will be fodder to the genin corps."

Naruto recoils, shoulder brushing hers, the shiver in him rattling against her. "Fodder," he repeats, so quietly she barely hears him. Ino steps delicately away from him. Being close enough to touch feels intimate somehow. It feels like they're friends. She can't stand it.

"Your fate rests with me." Yuugao is not like a blade, Ino realizes; she is steel incarnate. Ino wishes she could remember who killed her. "I'd advise you not to fail."

"Of course we won't fail!" Naruto scoffs loudly, throwing his head back and crossing his arms.

("Of course we won't lose!" Naruto grinned at her, one hand going to her shoulder. His long, pale cloak fluttered at the movement, like sparks at the edges of his feet. "Konoha shinobi don't lose, Ino!" Ino had tears in her eyes and the village was destroyed but Naruto smiled at her and she believed him. His eyes went softer, just a little. "Don't worry, okay? Leave it to me!")

"I don't know, Naruto," Ino says. When Naruto looks at her, he's horrified. "We might." He rounds on her, in her face, eyes scrunched up.

"We will not!"

"You might," Yuugao agrees. Naruto spins to look at her instead, whirling so quickly that he stumbles a bit. Yuugao doesn't seem particularly interested. She digs in her pocket briefly, pulling free a slip of paper. "I've gotten our first mission approved by the Hokage." She reveals the slip, holding the upmost part of it between her thumb and forefinger. Naruto moves to snatch it out of her hand; she raises her arm mildly, the paper out of reach and her expression going a bit darker.

"Naruto!" Sakura barks. "Stop trying to grab things from her!" Naruto's face twists a bit, like this comment only drives him on, and he looks like he's going to try to reach it a second time. He stops; something about Yuugao's face demands respect without having to ask for it, her energy going beyond the way words seem to sting her mouth on their way out.

Yuugao frowns. "There isn't anything to be excited over," she says, and after a moment in which she watches Naruto wiggle in something akin to shame, she drops the paper. It floats like a feather down into Naruto's grubby hands.

"A d-rank mission? Weeding a garden?" When he speaks, he spits a bit. She can't imagine what he was expecting. He's the lowest ranking rookie. It still makes her itch, makes something in her go restless. This world is going to curl in on itself and cannibalize. This world is going to shrivel inwards and burn. Ino doesn't have time.

(she doesn't have the energy)

"You're new genin," Yuugao says. She's smiling a little now. It's on the edge of mocking, her lip curled and her eyes dangerous. Ino knows the expression. She's seen it in the mirror. "You didn't think you'd get something better, did you?" One hand goes to her hip, the other going towards the three of them like an offering, beckoning. "Come on, then. Satsuki-san's garden isn't going to weed itself."

In the end Naruto rips up more flowers than weeds and Sakura complains hugely about the dirt and Ino watches Yuugao watch them and team seven completes their first mission.

(Team seven. That isn't right. Ino's on team ten.)

"There's no way this is all we get paid!" Naruto shouts, arms waving. "How am I supposed to pay my rent? Go to Ichiraku?"

Yuugao looks down at him the way a king looks down at conquered territory. "Do more work then," she says blandly.

"More gardens?" Naruto sounds equal parts horrified and disgusted.

(No. she isn't.)

…

"I want something better," Naruto wails out, dirt under his nails and his hair messy. Sakura flushes with embarrassment. "I don't wanna walk dogs! I don't wanna catch fish! I don't wanna—"

Yuugao placed a hand on top of his head, fingers on the edge of digging into his scalp. "I apologize, Hokage-sama," she says, voice deceptively mild. "Any more d-ranks?"

"I don't want a d-rank," Naruto mutters, mutinous. "There's got to be something better than a d-rank."

The Hokage laughs. The noise somehow sounds wrong coming from his mouth. He's the leader of one of the best villages in the Elemental Nations. It never occurred to Ino that he laughed. He was immortalized in her mind as something holy. He died when she was so young and there were so many deaths after. He wasn't just a man to her.

It isn't disappointing. Something inside her, though, feels a bit of a pang.

"Naruto, you're just a genin," the Hokage chides, the point underscored by his fond smile. He looks down at his desk, digging through a couple papers. "There was a nice one here," he murmurs, quieter now. "A c-rank guard mission. Kakashi took it, though."

Something like a genuine smile goes over Yuugao's face. "Sounds like him to take new genin on a mission like that," she says. A guard mission. Sounds simple.

"Why couldn't I be on that team," Naruto whines, ducking under Yuugao's hand and wiggling into place next to Ino, squeezing between her and Sakura. Sakura looks unhappy with this development, but the Hokage's presence keeps her from grumbling out protests. Ino digs her nails into her palms to keep from wiggling away.

She doesn't like d-ranks but for the first time she must admit this isn't about her. She can't be selfish anymore. She's lived her life wanting things and she still does. She's wanted things impossible, and she got one. She's gone back in time. Ino's not allowed to want more than that.

(But she does. She really does.)

Naruto pushes against his shoulder, a bump. Ino doesn't flinch because she's fine this is fine but—

(Ino isn't allowed to want more but she does.)

"Ino, aren't you sick of this?" Naruto pushes against her shoulder with his own for the second time. Her face goes scrunched up. "Don't you want something better than a d-rank? Right?"

She pushes him back. "Sure," she says, smiling slyly, "but I bet you wouldn't be able to handle much more."

"Oi!"

Sakura giggles, childish and young. "Right, right," she agrees. Naruto deflates.

"Sakura-chan..."

The entire event feels unreal. It's too casual. It's too easy to laugh. She spent so much of her childhood telling off other girls and applauding Sakura's successes. She can barely remember it, can barely come up with the flowers in that field and pushing a flower behind her ear, but this second feels similar to it. That little girl is gone. She grew up, and now she clings to partially memorized faces.

This—this calmness. It's wrong.

"I have one in here, actually," the Hokage announces. He seems too docile. It makes Ino's skin itch. "A guard mission!"

"Like the one team ten got?" Naruto's back to full enthusiasm now, actually throwing his hands on the Hokage's desk and leaning forward. It's so blatantly disrespectful that Ino nearly chokes on her own tongue. "Like the one Sasuke got?"

Sasuke. Ino hasn't thought of him since team assignments, nearly a month ago. It doesn't seem to matter that years have passed. Ino'd like to say she's grown, and she has. She's seen fire and she's seen death.

Still, something inside her burns. Even now Sasuke looks down on her. Sakura's face may have faded from memory, but she will never forget the way Sasuke looked at her. It was the same way Madara looked at her. It was as though she were nothing. Sasuke looked at her like she's below him. He looks at her like she's lesser.

It's selfish, but she wants to crush him under her foot.

"We'll take it!" Ino hears herself say, the ocean in her head sending up choppy waves over the stirring sand. She wishes she was a god or a devil; she wishes she was beyond this. But she isn't, and her vanity no longer has a death count. "Of course we'll take it!"

Sakura clasps her hands together, her face lighting up. "Exciting!" she cries, clapping twice. Yuugao gives a mild sigh.

"It's up to you, Yuugao," the Hokage says. His smile matched with Naruto's wild grin tell another story.

"Can't have Kakashi thinking team seven is any less than his." She adjusts herself, hand going to a hip when she shifts her weight. "We'll take it, then."

…

The mission is simple: There is a store halfway up the road out of Fire Country, one which will be unattended tonight. Attend it.

Although Naruto'd initially been unimpressed by the mission briefing—"This isn't even interesting," he'd grumbled—even the dirt below his feet is now exciting enough. "I've never seen this rock before!" he chirps, lifting a brown colored pebble and displaying it, hand going way too close to Ino's face. "It's amazing! I discovered a new rock!"

"Stop shoving dirt in my face," Ino snaps. She pushes him away by his wrist. His grin easily becomes a defensive almost-growl.

"It's a cool rock!"

"It's a rock, Naruto," Ino says, and Sakura sighs, a bit disdainful.

He stuck his tongue out at her and speeds up to walk closer to Yuugao and farther from Sakura and Ino. "It's a cool rock," he mutters, turning away from the two of them and continuing a search along the dirt road for anything else comparatively imposing.

"You're way too excited," Sakura says pointedly, taking a half step behind Ino when Naruto shoots back over, eyes shining from the brief interaction Sakura had given him. "I've seen dirt just like that at home."

"I've never left Konoha before," Naruto says, not like he's revealing a secret or like he's explaining himself. Nothing he says ever seems to be for a purpose. It's like he's just...talking. Ino bites her lip on a scowl. "Everything's so cool!"

"Everything's the same, you mean," Ino corrects. She hates the way she hates that Naruto's face falls just a pinch, before he turns back around and pulls at Yuugao's sleeve, asking her if she's ever been out of Fire Country, and how cool that must have been, and if she's ever gone to Kumo or the Land of Tea. Yuugao responds with voice mild, calm. Ino's lips press together into a thin line.

"Ne, Ino," Sakura goes, long pink hair flicking with the tilt of her head. "Did Naruto do something to you?"

Ino blinks. She stops walking for several seconds, before remembering herself and taking a couple large steps to catch up to Sakura. "What?"

Sakura shrugs, looking away from Ino. Ino's never seen their friendship as a competition but she knows Sakura has. Who's prettier, who's faster, who's smarter, who's stronger. I bet one day you'll be even prettier than a cosmos flower. "You've just been looking at him a lot." She gives Ino an amused look. "Being passive-aggressive for once? I would've thought you'd just smack him. That's what I do. It seems to work." Sakura nods somewhere close to sagely.

You've just been looking at him a lot.

("I can't practice with all this shouting," Naruto wailed, throwing his hands up in an elaborate show of despair. Ino was sixteen and halfway through a forced sparring match Chouji was desperately trying to avoid. She paused, crouched close to the ground while Chouji slipped behind Shikamaru.

"You're not even good at sealing," she said loftily, twirling around to give him a half-smile. Kiba coughed out a laugh across the small training field. "So I'm doing you a favor."

"I'll never get good at it if I can't try it..." He dipped his pen into an ink well, face pulled together unhappily.

Ino laughed. "Don't think Naruto's getting you out of this, Chouji," she warned. Chouji whined something to Shikamaru, something about being hungry or tired and Ino grinned. "C'mon! I'll buy lunch after!")

Something like mortification, something like regret, flushes over her. "No," she says, trying not to sound evasive. Finding out she's from the future seems very unlikely no matter how strange she acts but Ino still digs for something to say, something in character. It's been two years but she still feels lost. "He hasn't done anything. Just annoying, you know. Just…you know. Naruto."

Sakura laughs. The sound of it feels like a secret. It's like this laugh is just for Ino. It's like a best friend laugh. It feels like betrayal to hear it. Her Sakura is dead and it's her fault. They're never coming back. It's selfish to take this Sakura, too, to take these people the way she did before. "I know," Sakura agrees, still giving short giggles.

Ino has always been selfish.

"There it is," Yuugao says, her finger raising to point in the distance. It looks like a small cluster of buildings rising out of the trees. Ino squints at it. "That's the rest stop town. The store we're to guard is in there."

"Yuugao-sensei," Sakura asks, fidgeting a bit as though she thinks her next words will be stupid, "if it's in a town, why does it need guarding?"

"Sakura-chan, that's a good question!" Naruto agrees, probably more because it's Sakura speaking than because he found a concurrence in her words. He swoops back around to stand closer to her. The interaction only serves to annoy Sakura.

He's a mockery. Naruto isn't like this. He is, obviously, but he isn't.

Ino pulls at her hitai-ate, adjusting it on her right hip to hide her discomfort.

"I've been here before," Yuugao reveals. Over the couple of weeks together Ino has learned Yuugao does not like to speak about herself. She's caring and loyal and secretive. She'd bandaged Sakura's knees gently after a rougher spar match and berated Naruto with something close to fondness when he complained about how boring training was. But she doesn't like to speak on herself much. She doesn't like explaining her own life. Once, while Yuugao was frostily watching the three of them fail at the water-walking exercise, Hayate had brought her lunch. Afterwards Yuugao refused to say anything else on the subject; she shut down inquiries on her personal life with the same efficiency with which she swung her sword. "The residents aren't particularly friendly."

As it turns out, that's an understatement.

After an adventure through the trees—there was no path to it and so team seven was forced to go blindly behind Yuugao through thick forest—Ino discovers the "rest stop town" has no gates or discernible borders. Her shirt's ripped by the time they make it there; it got caught on a tree branch, which was unpleasant and caused a tear in the collar. Somehow the fishnet around her knees and elbows was spared by the experience. The chain mail under her shirt and buried beneath the bandages wrapped around her thighs would have kept her from true assault via tree branch, but all the same she does feel affronted by it.

("It's just a tiny rip in your shirt," Naruto had muttered. Ino'd felt irrationally upset by this statement.)

The populace are much worse than tree branches. The first couple buildings they come across are quiet, but not the soft kind. The silence is oppressive. When buildings turn from small shacks to stores with people littering them the silence becomes aggressive. Ino's been glared at before, been spat at before, but the way Sakura flinches back from these strangers and the way the children recoil from Ino as though afraid is unsettling.

"Hey, hey, Yuugao-sensei," Naruto whispers, not at all subtle but making an effort which Ino appreciates. "What's up with these people? It's creeping me out, 'ttebayo."

"This place hasn't changed," Yuugao murmurs. It could be Ino reading into things, but Yuugao almost looks protective of them. "This is a cautious, dangerous place. Stay close to me, alright?"

"Don't need to tell me twice," Sakura mumbles, pressing a bit closer to their teacher. Ino shifts so that she's walking on the other side of Sakura, glancing behind her suspiciously. She should've checked their astral correspondences for the day, made sure it wasn't a day to be afraid.

Ino's not afraid. She isn't. She hasn't felt fear since her heart stopped beating. She isn't afraid. People are just such fragile things and so easy to damage but she isn't afraid. The sun had been shining painfully against Ino's hair when they first left the village, but now the moon is heavy on the horizon, inching up into the sky.

But she isn't scared. Ino's too prideful to be afraid.

"This place is creepy, though," she muses, her index finger tapping against her thumb reflexively. Naruto nods fiercely in agreement.

"So creepy," he whispers. He sounds disturbed. She can't imagine why. This is the way the entirety of Konoha looks at him. Nothing has changed on his end except the people who look on in defensive fear.

Yuugao shushes them with a flick of her hand, her hair swishing back and forth with her steps. "We're here," she says. Her words carry a sort of finality. An unkempt but comparatively superior building looms in front of the four of them. There's a stiff, straight faced man standing in front of it. He scowls when he sees them.

"Finally," he says. The annoyance in him has Ino's hand twitching, as though her fingers long to hold a blade. He says something else defamatory about Konoha shinobi under his breath, something uncomplimentary about women, and then waves them forward hastily.

"Shou, I take it?" Yuugao asks. "The owner of this place?"

"Of course I am," the man snaps. He gathers himself into a heavy looking traveling bag off the front porch, tying the straps around his waist. Ino watches as he digs in a pocket, eventually pulling free a tiny key. He flicks it at Sakura with surprising carelessness for someone living in a place built on caution. She scrambles to catch it, dropping it twice before managing to full snatch it from the air. "Don't touch anything. Don't steal anything. Do not let anyone else steal anything. Especially you, brat," he says, gesturing to Naruto. The boy gapes in open shock. "I'll know if you take anything, you little rat!"

"I'm not a thief!" Naruto shouts back, bristling like an animal.

"You sure look like one," Shou notes dryly. His facial expression is hard, but almost unintentionally so. It's as though his natural expression is one of displeased anger. He walks past them as though they aren't of any significance to him. Ino watches him go.

"This place is perfect for a person like that," she says. When she looks back at the shop, Naruto's vanishing inside it, Sakura and Yuugao presumably already inside. "Huh? Wait for me!"

She catches the door handle and when she slips inside her eyes go a bit wide. The shop they've been ordered to guard is full of expensive looking weaponry, shiny armor, and what looks to Ino's trained eye like high quality kimonos. For the weasel-like visage Shou presented, Ino's impressed.

"Pretty," Sakura whispers, reverent.

"Don't touch anything," Yuugao warns and Ino sighs. It's in for a boring night.

…

Or not.

She's been lounging lazily across the checkout counter for several hours when something starts to itch. Yuugao's been leaning back on the wall near a display case of silver daggers dotted with rubies and one of her closed eyes twitches a bit, as though unnerved. The chakra of the other people here have been readily avoiding the area, as though disturbed by the shinobi, but now something sickly itches towards them.

"Something's coming," Ino says. Yuugao's eyes go open.

"Someone," she corrects and then the door goes flying across the room and Ino witnesses, for the first time, Yuugao engaged in battle. The wooden door frame smashes into several ornate blades, sending them clattering to the stone floor. Ino flips off the counter, landing against the wall and jumping from it across the shop, just before Yuugao flies into the counter, smashing against it and breaking it in half. A man Ino doesn't recognize lands on the spot a second before Yuugao comes back on her feet; the movements are so quick that Ino doesn't fully know what's happening before Yuugao's touken is unsheathed, clashing against the man's own sword.

The man grins. "Ho, ho, Shou hired someone, did he?" His mouth stretches even further. Yuugao grunts against the force on her blade, feet sliding backwards over the counter wreckage. "And to think, I killed his uncle to get him out of town."

"Yuugao-sensei!" Naruto pulls free a kunai, feet going into his own defensive stance. Ino steps in front of Sakura, her ninjato in front of her. "Get away from her!"

Yuugao's wielding one-handed; her free hand comes up into a seal just as her foot flies upwards, swiping at the man's head. He dodges back. "Kage Bushin no Jutsu," Yuugao hisses out, a copy of her popping into existence. The copy slides in front of the three of them, her back to Ino. The real Yuugao leaps into the air, body twirling, and this time her kick hits—she sends the man flying straight through the wooden wall to the dirt road outside it. "Stay here!" she barks when she lands to the floor, and then her body is a blur, leaping through the hole she created.

For a moment Ino can hear nothing but her own breathing. "Holy shit," she says.

The clone whips around to face the three of them. "This is going to be fine," she is saying when the floor explodes, a hand coming up and swiping through her body. Ino watches as Yuugao's face twists in pain, and then the clone ceases to exist, leaving behind only smoke.

"Yuugao-sensei!" Naruto cries, panicked now, and the other man destroys the floor, pulling himself out of the new hole in the shop. "You bastard!"

This man is just like the other. His smile sends shivers over Ino's skin. "Just kids, huh? There's something I want in here. You can just let me take it, right?"

"The mission is to protect this shop," Sakura shouts with surprising confidence. "We won't let you take anything!"

He pauses. Grins. "Good," he says and then he's attacking.

Ino dodges the first kick, bending over so far she's practically in half. Her legs follow the movement in a flip backwards, sending her flying away from him, and the punch he sends hits her wrist, her ninjato skidding away from her. She's still so weak—this man is clearly self-taught, clearly a civilian playing at being a fighter, and yet he's beating her and Ino can feel her heart in her chest and the next kick has her leaping into the air but—

Ino wasn't the target, and Sakura goes across the room like a ragdoll, shattering an elaborate display of clothing and falling to the floor in a heap. It makes Ino feel like her heart is stopping. You're my only real friend, Ino. Ino is a failure. "Sakura!" Naruto screams and then he's dodging back from a sword swipe, one of his palms caught by it, blood flying, iron in the air, and Ino's hands go into symbols for a technique she probably can't complete.

"Shinranshin no Jutsu!" she shrieks, and for just a bare second the man's in too much pain to even move and that second is enough. Ino's moving before she knows what's happening, grabbing a sword off the ground and clutching it's bejeweled handle and she sweeps his legs out, her kick so hard it sends a sting up her leg, leaping on top of him like a panther, like an animal, blade at his neck, so close she can feel how he stops moving.

She breathes. He takes shallow inhales; each time, with each small movement of his neck, the skin cuts the tiniest, tiniest bit on the sharpened edge in Ino's hands. "Naruto," she hears herself say. The voice is plain, bored, and far away. She feels weightless. "Check on Sakura."

She doesn't look at him, but she can feel the way the room aches from tension.

"Sakura-chan's going to be okay, I think," Naruto's saying and Ino can barely hear him. "She's knocked out over there. Ino, what are you doing?"

The man under her, frozen and eyes wide and shaking he's trembling how pathetic. How was she ever afraid of this. How did this man send Sakura flying, likely breaking at least one of her ribs. It suddenly doesn't make sense to her. He swallows, the movement causing the shiny blade of this expensive metal to bite just barely into the flesh of his neck. She can see the blood beading up in the corner of her vision. She stays focused on his eyes, on the way she can feel his legs twitching in between her two knees. "Don't move," she whispers to him, like it's intimate, like it's something shared, and maybe it is. Maybe there's no closer relationship than murder. "I'll kill you."

"Kill him?" Naruto's shocked, horrified by her and it's sick, isn't it. He's the monster, not her. He doesn't get to talk to her like that. "Of course you won't kill him," Naruto says, insulted, and his voice is a bit stronger now. Closer. Louder. There's a sound like wind shifting, a vague warmth close to her before she feels one of his hands on her shoulder, the arm going around her back. She tenses against it. The only person allowed to act so comfortable around her is her father. Not even Sakura touches her casually; she'd caught Ino off guard once, surprised her, and Ino had been so shocked so afraid that she'd sprained the other girl's wrist.

Sakura forgave her. Ino did not forgive herself.

How does Ino dare to feel fear?

Ino can hear Sakura's quiet, short breathing. She's unconscious across the shop, nearly smothered by knocked over kimonos. The finely woven fabric must surround her, although Ino doesn't look away from the man's eyes. She can see the pinks of them.

Naruto's other hand comes up to her arm, sliding down until he's touching her wrist. "Put the sword down," he repeats.

"Get off me," Ino spits out and her hand is shaking. Why is it shaking? She's done this before. Why is she shaking?

"We're friends, right?" Naruto says. She hates that he means it. "It'd be cool to be your friend."

"Shut up!" she snarls. Her hand is shaking. With each tiny jittery twitch it nips lightly into the man's neck. There's blood collecting in the hollow of his throat, dripping down. It's as though he's wearing a necklace. "I never liked you, you know that? You're an annoyance. What do you know?"

"We're teammates, Ino," Naruto's saying, pressing in on her, getting closer like he knows she wants to run away. He goes from just touching her wrist to latching onto it, the blood on his hand sticky against her skin. "Why can't we be friends, too?"

(He smiled at her, eyes crinkling from the motion, the dried blood under his eye angered from the movement. "Of course I saved you," he said like it was obvious, like she was stupid. Ino was bloody and he was bloodier and right then she wished he hadn't. She didn't want to fight anymore. She just wanted to die. "We're friends, Ino."

He smiled at her and Ino was bloody and he was bloodier and she didn't want to die, anymore.)

She feels her breath catch. Shut up.

"Don't kill him," he says, and so she doesn't.