A/N: "Tadaima" is the basic Japanese greeting for when you return home from school or work or even when you just haven't seen someone in a long time. In the case of the latter, you aren't necessarily talking about returning home to a physical place, rather you are returning home to the person you care about.

Rating: M for language, violence (of the Torture and Interrogation kind), and adult situations.
Disclaimer: Naruto is still not mine, but Kishimoto's. Sad :[

And So

Chapter 5: "Tadaima"

Ibiki had to physically remove Ino from headquarters and threaten her with indefinite Sasuke duty to convince her to take a day off. She had been overusing her jutsus again (Ino could almost hear Sakura screeching at her about chakra reserves and self-control and blah blah blah) which resulted in a lot of unattractive nosebleeds. Apparently ANBU Bear, who had come to collect classified files for Tsunade, did not appreciate having to handle paperwork that looked like it had lived through the Uchiha Massacre.

"What a baby. He skewers people with a sword for a living," Ino muttered to the flower arrangement she was working on. "Everyone's a critic."

"How do you decide which flowers to use in your arrangement?" interrupted Hyuuga Neji. He was politely sipping tea from her mother's best ceramics and watching her serenely. They were supposed to go on a "date" today but honestly? Ino had no idea what Neji did for fun. Did Neji even believe in fun?

Inoichi quietly lurked in the background pretending to do work. He had welcomed the Hyuuga heir into his shop but he wasn't very happy about it. Although Neji was a well-respected Jounin from one of the oldest families in Konoha, he was still a boy. Inoichi had a vendetta against ninety-nine percent of the boys in Konoha these days. Like the recon ninja he was, he hid in the shadows. Watching. Waiting.

"They aren't supposed to be ornate. You pick one main flower and then decorate around it. The flowers you use change depending on the season," Ino explained. "Ikebana is extremely important to civilian upper class women. If they aren't good at it, it's hard for them to get married. Ridiculous, isn't it?" Ino loved flowers but using ikebana as a basis of worth was completely ludicrous. There was more to a woman than how well she arranged flower or mixed tea.

Neji looked thoughtful. "I don't know about that. It says something about a person's determination and skill to be able do this well."

"There's a trick to it, just like anything else. It's—" Ino saw her father out of the corner of her eye sharpening hedge trimmers savagely. "Daddy, we're running low on salvia. Could you please get some more from the greenhouse?"

Inoichi paused in his sharpening. "Well—"

"Please," Ino's tone left no room for argument.

"Alright, but I'll be right back," he said pointedly to Neji. "Right. Back."

"Could you just go already?!" Ino made shooing motions. "I swear, that man…"

Neji watched Inoichi inch out the door. Before he disappeared into the greenhouse he pointed to his eyes and then to Neji as if to say, I'm watching you, buddy. "You two have a very good relationship."

"I guess you could say that."

Silence.

Worse: Awkward silence.

"To be honest," Ino started, "I'm not really good at dealing with you."

"'Dealing with me?'" Neji echoed.

She folded her arms across her chest, looking at a spot on the wall behind him. "You're hard to read. I feel like when you look at me you're really looking at me."

"Isn't it polite to make eye contact with a person when they're speaking to you?" If Ino didn't known better, she might think Neji sounded amused.

Hyuuga Neji did not just look at a person. Everyone looked at her but not everyone saw her. Ino had spent years building up a beautiful façade, an iron defense that not many could penetrate; she wasn't about to let herself get undone by Konoha's Number One Most Socially Awkward Genius. "Anyway," Ino recovered smoothly. "There's also… That Thing that happened at the Chuunin exams that I just can't forget. It makes it really hard to talk with you."

"'That thing'?" he repeated back.

"You know!" Ino's gestured wildly with her hands. "That Thing."

Neji mentally walked through the events of the Chuunin exams in question. "Do you mean my fight with Hinata-sama?" he asked quietly. He had been so bitter and so dangerous that he almost made the biggest mistake of his life. It was a shameful memory that he had wanted desperately to forget.

"No! No, not that. Just forget I said anything, okay?" His steady gaze on her had made her so nervous but the sad, remorseful expression that overtook his face at the thought of hurting Hinata made her even more flustered. Logically Ino knew that even the most stoic ninja had feelings but she wasn't quite ready to experience all of Neji's.

"If not that, then… the Forest of Death?"

Ino's silence said it all.

"When you attempted to seduce me and get my autograph?"

"Noooo," Ino moaned, turning her back to Neji and clutching the wall behind her in despair. She wanted to die. Just curl up and die right there. "Don't remind me!" She had been twelve and overconfident and stupid and it was painful to even think about it.

His lips quirked up ever so slightly. "Does that mean you don't want my autograph anymore?"

She buried her face in her hands miserably. Why hadn't she listened to Shikamaru when he said her plan wouldn't work? Why didn't she ever listen? Ten years later, she was still paying for her immaturity.

"You said you've always wanted to get to know me better," Neji pointed out.

Ino staggered, as if hit with a physical attack. "Okay, okay, I get it, just—"

His eyes never left her, even as she attempted to slither away. "And now you're getting the chance."

Was… Hyuuga Neji actually making… a joke?

A scarier thought: Was he serious?

Neji continued to sip his tea serenely. Either way, Ino thought weakly, she was not going to make it through this courtship alive.

Since her birthday months earlier, Ino had been doing a spectacular job of avoiding prolonged amounts of contact with Sakura. Ino had a lot on her plate right now: T&I work, the flower shop, avoiding suitors, spending time with the people she was engaged to, trying to keep sane. Ino had no time to breathe or sleep, let alone face down an angry Sakura.

Anyway, even though Sakura was perpetually annoyed with her, she had never really been angry with Ino. Angry Sakura was a force to be reckoned with. She once punched a man in a hospital who still had an IV still connected to his arm, no holds barred. And it seemed that Sakura was on the warpath; Ino had heard about the Nara Shougi Board Incident from Shikamaru.

Honestly, Ino knew it was only a matter of time before Sakura came for her. She was scared for her life.

But surely Sakura understood where Ino was coming from. She wasn't going out of her way to hurt anyone. She just wanted to exert some control over her life. She wanted to show the men of Konoha that she was not to be trifled with just because she was a woman. Even though her path had been laid out before her since the time of her conception, even though there were all these expectations and rules and pressure, in the end, Ino just wanted to live her life the way that she wanted.

Fight as they may, Sakura was her best friend, so of course she would understand Ino's way of thinking.

"Hey." Ino dropped the shoes she was holding in surprise. Sakura loomed behind her, low voice and very close to her ear. Not that she would ever admit it, but Ino was a little afraid to turn around. "We need to talk."

… or maybe not.

With a sigh of resignation, Ino put her other shopping bags down. "Alright. What's up?"

"'What's up? WHAT'S UP?' ARE YOU EVEN KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?" The store owner, a nice young civilian woman named Yasuko, hid under her desk. Ino would miss shopping here.

"Why are you so upset?"

Sakura choked back her rage. "YOUR TERRIBLE LIFE CHOICES!"

Ino pretended to look offended. "Well, I never."

"What are you doing?! Don't you care at ALL about the people you're hurting? It might just be a game to you, but peoples' feelings hang in the balance!" Sakura looked exasperated. "We're all supposed to be friends!"

"I didn't force anyone to do anything," Ino browsed the shoe shelves. "If you want to go yell at someone, why don't you start with Naruto, Kiba, and Neji? Or my father? Or the entire older generation of our clans that have these stupid archaic rules to begin with?"

Sakura grabbed her arm. "No, you know exactly what you're doing. You've manipulated this entire situation—"

Ino yanked her arm out of Sakura's tight hold. "What? You mean the situation I was forced into? You're damn right I did! It's my life."

"You're just being selfish! You don't care who you hurt as long as you get what you want!" Sakura didn't mean it, not entirely, but it was hard to express her worry for Ino when Ino was being such a bitch. "What about Hinata? Or Tenten? You don't think any of them care about what you're doing!?"

Ino shrugged. "Is it my fault that they haven't made their move yet? If I were Hinata, I would have told Naruto how I felt ages ago. And if I were Tenten, I would have fought for the person I loved. You can't just sit around waiting for happiness to come to you!"

Her cold words felt like a personal attack on Sakura, who had always, always waited for Sasuke to return. Almost instinctively, her arm reeled back and she slapped Ino across the face. Hard. Yasuka gasped from under her desk.

Ino held her cheek, swearing under her breath. That was going to leave a mark. "You just—you—" Sakura was so angry she couldn't even get the words out. "YOU JUST THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE!"

"Uh," said a new, male voice at the door interrupted. It was Ino's new best friend, ANBU Bear. Great, Ino thought. Is he going to complain about me bleeding on the merchandise now? "Hokage-sama wants to see you, Yamanaka."

She stood up shakily, grabbing her shopping bags. "Gladly."

"We're not done yet!" Sakura protested.

"We're done," Ino brushed past Sakura and was out the door with ANBU Bear before Sakura could yell any further.

Seeing that the coast was finally clear, Yasuko crawled out from under her desk. She stared at Sakura, her mouth slanted down in annoyance and disapproval. "I think I should go now," Sakura said sheepishly.

"I think that would be for the best."

It was a fairly simple mission: A recon ninja (Ino) and a tracker ninja (Shino) were supposed to find and gather information on a group of dangerous criminals from Fire country. No fighting, no physical engagement, no mess. It was the type of mission that Ino and Shino were made for and had done a hundred times before. They were supposed to get in and get out and be done with it.

Ino should have known that nothing ever went her way.

"So," Shino said as they waited behind a bush for someone to come out, "you are engaged to Kiba." It had been nearly two hours and there had been no signs of anyone, despite Shino's insistence that this was the spot where they needed to be. Ino knew better than to argue with her team leader—she was in no mood for a three hour lecture on why his insects were always accurate.

Ino rubbed the bridge of her nose. He picked now of all times to gossip? "You know, we should really be concentrating on this mission. So let's just sit here quietly and wait."

"Ah."

Oh man, did she just hurt his feelings by brushing him off? It probably took a lot of courage for Shino to strike up a conversation outside of battle with her. "Look, I—"

Suddenly, they were surrounded, but not by ordinary criminals. The men had strong chakra readings, flak jackets, cloth covering the bottom on their faces, and were armed to teeth with kunai and shuriken.

"Were we expecting company?" Ino asked, flinging a kunai with deadly precision at one of their faces. He screamed in agony when it pieced his eye.

"No."

"Great."

Sakura was feeling guilty and hating herself for it.

On one hand, she had been entirely right in smacking some sense into Ino, who was not only hurting other people but herself as well. On the other hand, it wasn't her life and maybe she didn't fully understand what Ino was going through.

"GRAAAHH!" Sakura flipped some papers off of her desk in a fit of misplaced anger. "I don't care anymore!"

Shikamaru watched as the papers fluttered uselessly to the ground, grateful that she hadn't thrown anything heavier. His nose was still recovering from the Shougi Board Incident. "Bad time?"

Sakura cleared her throat and pretended to look professional. She had been meaning to apologize to Shikamaru for some time but it had taken a backseat to knocking some sense into his teammate. She really needed to learn to control her temper and strength, lest she end up forever single and alone like her mentor. "No, it's fine. Shikamaru, I—"

"I don't make it a habit to get involved in a fight between women," He slumped down into an empty chair. "Just for the record."

Sakura rolled her eyes. Here we go. "Go on."

"I heard about what happened at the shoe store."

Damn it, was nothing a secret in this village? "Who told you?" she grumbled. She didn't want to start losing credibility as an awesome and talented ninja just because of a few (okay, maybe a little more than a few) incidents off duty.

"Doesn't matter. Anyway, I know that you're pissed at Ino and I'm not defending anything she does. Hell, I can barely understand why she does them in the first place. But maybe you need to see things from her point of view." Shikamaru scratched the back of his neck, clearly uncomfortable with all this talk about feelings and crap. "Since we were kids, she was always the one under the most pressure. Her old man was always wavering about whether or not he wanted her to take over some day."

Sakura gaped. "Are you serious? That makes no sense! She was always one of the most talented people in our class!"

"Yeah, well, you know how he dotes on her, right? He wanted to spare her the extra burden of having to lead the clan, even if she is better than all of her cousins."

It screamed injustice and suddenly, realization was starting to dawn on Sakura. "And wanting to join T&I like Inoichi-san—"

"—he was totally against it," Shikamaru said. "Even though their jutsus are made for it, being a woman in Intel is dangerous. Intel ninjas are most likely to get caught and kept alive for information."

Sakura winced. She had heard plenty of horror stories about what they did to female ninjas to extract information. Part of her wondered if Ino ever had to go through that. Part of her never wanted to know.

"There's a lot she doesn't—and can't—tell you. Ino doesn't want anyone to worry about her. So now on top of all of that, she has this new obligation forced on her…" Shikamaru trailed off, hoping that Sakura could connect the dots. All this explaining was so troublesome.

"And she just wants to make her own choices," Sakura finished. Ino had said as much to her but Sakura hadn't really been listening. "I'm the worst friend."

"Nah," Shikamaru picked something out his ear with his pinkie finger, "Ino could easily drive a person to murder over something stupid. You reacted normally. I wouldn't worry too much about it."

"Thank you," Sakura said earnestly. "And I'm sorry about the… shougi board thing."

Shikamaru smirked. "I've already accepted that it's my station in life to be surrounded by the most troublesome women. I gotta head out now, though. Godaime wants to talk about Chuunin exam preparations. Such a pain."

"Sakura-san! Emergency!" One of the medics in training, a mousy chuunin girl, nearly ran over Shikamaru to get to Sakura's desk. All ninety pounds of her gracelessly crashed into him. "They need you downstairs in surgery right now!"

Sakura immediately went in medic mode. "What—?"

She held out a familiar silver earring in her blood stained latex glove. Shikamaru touched his own matching stud.

"It's Yamanaka-san."

Weirdly enough, when Ino awoke, she was in a bar. The last thing she remembered was the failed mission that was supposed to be a piece of cake. She remembered getting attacked by the rogue ninja. She remembered performing medical jutsu on Shino and carrying him back to Konoha even though she was wounded herself (broken arm, stab wounds, potential internal bleeding). Now there were no signs of injuries on her. Her clothes were perfectly intact. She felt no pain.

Sitting at the bar was a man with his fingers wrapped around a bottle of beer. Wisps of smoke curled around him as he took a drag on a familiar smelling cigarette. Ino sat down on a stool next to him.

"Long time no see, Sensei," Ino smiled through her tears. "I have a lot I want to tell you."