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: Maybe giving myself a deadline really works because here, as promised, is the second chapter. And also it means that Ino is now here.

Muse: Thank you to ino95, kljjlkjlkj, WolfFlowerz, via-loves-Tyson, Yoruichi 'Ino', and kiwi4m4, who all reviewed that last chapter.

Dedi: This chapter is dedicated to Yoruichi 'Ino'

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've felt like this somewhere before,
I've felt the warm hand turn cold,
Yes I've been down that road before,
I've walked along this road somewhere,
I learned a lot then and there,
I know a smile can turn into a frown,
I've been down that road before,

Start to Finish

If she were honest with herself, then Yamanaka Ino would admit that this was just about the last place that she wanted to be. Just about everybody else had already stated that this was somewhere that they didn't want the twenty-two-year-old jounin to be. Her mentor and, she liked to think also her friend, Morino Ibiki had even entered into a full on screaming match with the, still by most standards, newly appointed Sixth Hokage, which was completely out of character for her normally in control leader. He was that opposed to the situation which somehow they had all ended up in.

The scared head of Konoha's ANBU Torture and Interrogation Force had raged at the blond male who had been equally forceful. Ibiki was adamant that this was not something that should be asked of his top pupil. It was not that she was not capable, far from it in fact and he would deal severely with anyone who said otherwise. It was simply that this was not something she should be subjected to. She was an interrogator; Ino was the one who was meant to inflict torture it was not meant to be inflicted upon her.

Uzumaki Naruto had not been happy about the situation either, but as he stated repeatedly in the face of ANBU head's argument, they had run out of options. They had tried everything possible to brake the man sitting in one of the most highly guard rooms within the Torture and Interrogation Force building. Physical torture had proved useless, as had that of the emotional variety. Seduction had been a none starter, the male in question simply sneering with disdain at the two kunoichi who had tired. Even Ibiki himself had failed; he who could attack a person's mind like no one else, using that skill to brake even the strongest of wills.

Except for one.

Flash Back

"We've run out of options and the Hokage seems to think that you are the only choice we have left..." Morino Ibiki paused and tuned to look at his apprentice and felt his blood pressure start to rise and his control on his temper start to slip. "Brat! Will you stop eating and pay attention!"

"I am paying attention!" The blonde snarled and spraying cookie crumbs over the desk in the posses, which only caused Ibiki to glare still harder at her. "Why the hell d'you think I'm eating! Believe it or not I do not live on chocolate chip cookies."

The scared shinobi looked from Ino to the half eaten pack of cookies which had spilled still more crumbs over his desk, opened his mouth to yell at her, looked back to her face and closed it once more. She was sitting so rigidly in the chair; her eyes were wide and starring as she did a good impression of squirrel nibbling at a nut with her latest cookie.

"Fine, fine. But can you at least look as if you're taking this seriously." Ino shot him a furious look, which would have been more intimidating if her jaws hadn't been working furiously on the biscuit. And she'd some how managed to get chocolate onto one of her cheeks. "At the moment you look like a kid on an academy outing."

"I am taking this seriously and you know that. Or is it that you don't think I'm up to the task!" Ibiki watched as the girl started to push herself out of her seat and recognised the classic sighs of 'Ino in a rage' or at least attempting to be in a rage. But he knew her better than she knew herself and could tell that the blonde was trying to use her anger to mask her fear of the task she was being faced with.

"Don't be ridiculous, I trained you after all." The hand he placed to her shoulder was both comforting and reassuring and Ino allowed herself to be pushed back down on the chair. "No, I know you can do this, it's just I wish you didn't have to."

"You're not the only one sensei." When Ino spoke her voice was a lot softer than the one her mentor was used to and the smile she gave him as she waved the packet of cookies at him was also lacking a certain Yamanaka like quality. "Cookie?"

End Flash Back

They had explored every avenue short of poisoning the prisoner and hoping for a death bed confession. Ibiki had been all for trying it until a testy Naruto had pointed out that it had been joke. The head interrogator had said that didn't mean it wasn't a good idea, or at least was a better one than what the blond Hokage was intending to do. It was in the nature of snakes, he argued, to attack any small furry mammal they came across and he didn't want Ino to become the next victim.

"You're calling Ino a mouse, Ibiki-san?"

"No, of course not. But my point –"

"Is valid. It's just that sometimes that small furry mammal the snake goes for turns out not to be a mouse but a mongoose. Result, one dead snake."

So here she now stood outside of a cell, facing a door on the other side of which was the person she hoped she would never have to see again unless it was to look down on his dead body. Ibiki was standing behind Ino, and flanking him were two special jounin whose job was simply not to let anyone in or out of that cell, unless they had the highest possible clearance.

"Ino," The disfigured man said gruffly. "We can wait if you need more time to prepare yourself… I know you had an emotional attachment to – "

"I'm fine, Ibiki-san." Ino said, knowing that he must indeed be very concerned about her if he was going as far as using her given name. Normally he referred to her either as Yamanaka or more commonly as Brat. "After all this is what I've been trained for."

She flashed him a bright smile, but her mentor saw the tightness that lingered around her eyes and the tension in her every limb. The Yamanaka might be an accomplished liar; he had helped school her after all, but that also meant that he had known her for too many years to be fooled. He had been the first one to notice the girl's potential, and it had only been after his constant and insistent demands that he had been allowed to draft Ino into ANBU black ops. From that moment on he had trained and coached her personally, pushing her relentlessly to be all that she could be. The end result had made all the effort worthwhile, for she was by far the best he had ever taught, but looking at her now Ibiki had to ask himself if he had trained her well enough to do what was now being ask of her.

Taking a deep breath the blue eyed female pushed open the heavy, chakra effused door, and head held high walked into the cell. The sound of the locks on the door clicking into place echoed in the cool air and to Ino each one represented another lair of her emotional self being stripped away until all that was left was the woman who had earned the title of 'Konoha's number one bitch'. The interrogation room was bare except for two chairs, one of which was empty and one in which a dark haired male casually reclined.

"I knew," The traitorous snake said, something akin to a smile hovering around the corner of his mouth. "I knew if I waited long enough they'd call on you, Yamanaka."

"And I hoped if I waited long enough that I could spit on your rotting corpse." Ino said in a wistful voice before she spat out his name like it was some vile sour fruit. "Uchiha Sasuke."

XXXXXXXXXX

The Yamanaka knew why she was here and was almost curtain that the prisoner did as well. If he didn't give the answers she wanted then Ino would just go inside his head and forcible take them. Over the years she had learned how to use her clan jutsu in ways that those who remembered the child Ino, would have thought unimaginable. She could slip inside someone's mind like a shadow, read their soul like a book and slip away again without the person in question being any the wiser. Or she could tare her victim's mind apart from the inside out; snatch the information she required and leave the individual a broken, insane lunatic. Forever trapped in the confines of their broken psyche.

"Why did you do it?" Ino finally asked. "Why did you leave?"

After about half an hour of fruitless questioning she decided to just give up and ask him directly. It was the one main flaw of her character, Yamanaka Ino was not known for her patient nature. When in 'interrogator' mode she had learned to control herself… mostly. Twice she had lost it, but luckily both times the prisoner in question had broken down in the face of the blonde's demented rage and spilled the desired information on the spot. It was something about which Ibiki still liked to torment her. But they knew what she was like and if everyone else had failed she might as well just do what she did best, head on confrontation.

Sasuke let out a breath he didn't even know he had been holding and a slight smile started to play around his lips. He had begun to worry that the young woman sitting opposite really had changed, transformed into another person. But no, there was the Ino he knew the one he had come looking for. Jumping feet first into everything, a subtle as a sledgehammer, all she knew how to do was to charge at obstacles head on and blast them out of her way.

"I started thinking, that I was tired of doing things somebody else's way and it'd always be somebody else's way." If the blue eyed kunoichi was surprised that Sasuke had answered her question without hesitation then she betrayed no outward sign.

"You see it was doing things somebody else's way that left my family the way it did, dead. My brother did things somebody else's way and look what happened." Sasuke watched as his words rolled like water over the arctic blonde, and he wondered just how much she knew about the events that led up to the Uchiha massacre. Probably every sordid little detail if he had judge her correctly, Ino liked to in possession of all the facts and she was doubtless the only person alive who rushed in blindly with their eyes wide open.

"So you abandon your friends and betray your village?" There was no heat behind the words, but he could hear the way every letter sounded as if it had been dipped in acid.

"Leaving my friends and Konoha, that didn't hurt as much as I thought..." As he trailed off Ino looked up, one brow raising in a bored, silent, question. "But leaving you did."

"Mm." Had she been the same obsessive fan-girl she had been when he left, Ino would have leapt squealing from her chair and flung herself into his arms. Had she been the same girl, but she wasn't. She was now older and wiser and had seen far too much of the dark side of human nature to ever again be moved by the pretty words that came from a silver edged serpent tongue.

"You're a hard act to follow, Yamanaka." And even though he used her last name there was a definite caress to the word. "Everybody else stayed away when I warned them off, but you never did."

"Funny really," And there really was a true hint of laughter in her voice. "As it was the only thing you've ever said that was actually worth listening to."

"I remember a time when you didn't care what I said, as long as I was saying it to you." A smile flitted across Sasuke's face and for a moment Ino could again see the young boy she had once known.

But time changed people and she could see the evidence of its effects clearly before her eyes. The lines of his face contrasted with the youthfulness of his body, but they were the hollows and recesses of suffering not age, a deepening around the eyes and down the planes of his face. His skin was fair, looking almost pale under the glare of the harsh florescent light, and there was a fine scar along the ridge of his cheek and over his left eye.

There was a time when she would have looked at him though rose tinted glasses, seen the scars he bore as the marks of a hero. But now all she did was wonder absently how he had killed the person who had cut up his face. With one fast hit, his rage driving him to strike like a snake. Or had it been slow and drawn out, did he make the person suffer for the damage they had done.

"So why did you come back?" And now they were getting to it, the question that had the whole village poised on the edge of a knife. Was he a spy in their midst or had he allowed himself to be brought back because he really wanted to return.

"For many and varied reasons," He caught her eye, and smirked at the hard expression on her beautiful face. "But I am not the start of an envision force. Konoha is safe, from me at least, and on that you have my word."

"And those reasons would be…?" Ino inquired; as if she had either not heard or if she had that she didn't care about his promise.

"So you're taking my word?" Sasuke said only to have his expression darken when he looked at her impassive façade. "Or is it because you think you can just stroll into my head and find out if I'm speaking the truth or not."

"We both know, not only that I can, but if you give me the provocation that I will." Frozen icy orbs fixed with dark onyx eyes. "Now, those reasons."

"As I said, many and varied. But one of the main ones, if you're interested," He paused but she gave no reaction and simply continued to sit staring off into space. "Would have to be you."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you Uchiha," The kunoichi said, sounding anything but sorry as she rolled her extraordinary eyes at him. "But the days when Sakura and I used to fight over you are long over. If she still wants you then she's more then welcome to have you. But traitors hold no interest for me so you are going to have to do much better than that as far as reasons for your return go."

By now completely at easy Sasuke leaned back in his hard wooden chair, his arms folded behind his head and his legs stretched out in front of him. He would give the blonde all the reasons she wanted, there was no point in trying to hide anything from Konoha now anyway, and scoff though she might there had been more to what he had said than simply trying to get inside her head. None of what he had said had been a lie, yes leaving Konoha and the rest of his friends had hurt, but leaving the bubbly blonde had hurt more.

Yamanaka Ino was the girl he had never had the time or interest to get to know, which at the time had been fine. But now, years on, it made her a mystery, a riddle that he wanted to solve. She could hide what she felt so deeply beneath the surface that it was impossible to know her true reaction to anything. What you saw was what the mind walked wanted you to see, even if Sasuke hadn't already known it the short space of time he had spent in her company would've made it clear. He felt no strong emotional tie to the girl, yet, except the faint stirrings of lust. But there was just something about her that made him want to get to know her better.

Why was it that leaving her, a girl he had hardly known had hurt more than leaving the team who had almost become like a family to him? Why was it that when Sakura had clung to him he had felt violated but when it was the blonde he felt no need to get her to let go? Why was it that she, who had once declared her love of him so openly, now refused to look on him as anything other than a traitor? Ino was a puzzle that begged to be solved. Simply put she intrigued him.

"You don't believe that I'd return simply because my heart told me I had to be with you?" He said, watching intently for her reaction, though he could accurately guess what it would be. The blonde did not disappoint.

"I don't think you would have willingly put yourself through the beating Hyuuga Neji, Inuzuka Hana and Aburame Shino subjected you to for any person other than yourself." Ino dropped each name, to show the male sitting opposite her that she knew ever detail of how he had been brought back to The Hidden Leaf Village. Knew, and didn't care what they had done to him which, even though he had come willingly had resulted in a short spell in hospital.

"And you certainly would not have put yourself through it for me," The very notion made her want to laugh with derision. "Regardless of what your heart, that black and withered thing without pity, might or might not have told you."

"Like I said Yamanaka, you're a hard act to follow." Taking a deep breath Sasuke settled himself more comfortably in his seat. "But as for my other reasons…"

Lamb: And Sasuke's other reason are….? Honestly I have no clue; they play no roll in the story and have no bearing on anything. So frankly I don't care and they won't be truing up in the story. Though whatever they are they're not bad but if anyone has any ideas then let me know.

Muse: We will again set a deadline of the 1st if next month to update, but it might be sooner if we can get it written.

Dedi: If, being the key word in that statement and as always reviews are loved and appreciated.

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

Big love and inspiration

Lamanth