Three: Reaffirm

Warnings: This might just be as poorly written as I'm afraid it is.

Author's Note: Wow, that was quite the little break, wasn't it? It's been over a month since I've last updated, I wouldn't be surprised if I lost my tiny pool of readers already. I suppose that's what I get for mistreating those kind enough to read and review this junk by disappearing for 40 days. I had kept up trying to write this, but I never really liked what I got out, or I wrote something that was inappropriate for this moment in the continuity. Between this chapter and the previous three, I have over 40 pages of typed text - almost all of it trash! But I figured I should post something, or else I'd never end up continuing it. For the last 40 days and last 40 pages I've also been hammering out exactly what I want to do with this story, since I was a complete fking moron and started writing it without giving very much thought to where I was going with it. But now, I have a plan in mind, so updates should be a more regular thing... if only because I'm back in school again and now I have other things that I should be doing other than writing shoujo lime fanfiction.

In other news, I've come to despise my own writing style, AGAIN. Every once in a while I'm suddenly struck by how verbose and cumbersome my writing is, suddenly notice that I'm starting to slip into bad, bad old habits. Hopefully with practice I'll get back on track and actually like the way some of this turns out. Until then, I just hope you all don't hate me for it.

"Just like old times, wasn't it?"

Sakura was raking her fingertips through her hair, trying her very best to straighten it out a bit but failing miserably all the same. She paused momentarily, turning half way towards Ino. "What?"

Ino lowered the empty glass from her lips and placed it on the counter beside the sink. "That's what you wanted, right? For things to be the same as they were before." She watched Sakura struggling to fix her hair for a long moment before she approached her suddenly, reaching. Sakura's hands dropped almost immediately and she held them out defensively. Ino ignored her, coming closer in spite of Sakura's hands on her shoulders, trying to press her back. "Stop it," Ino chided, and then set to work fixing Sakura's hair herself. "You look pathetic."

"I didn't think things would have been the same," Sakura muttered quietly, choosing to ignore Ino's deliberate jab, her voice taking on a defensive tone.

"I didn't ask what you thought, I asked what you wanted," Ino replied casually. Too casually; her tone came off as hard, callous, cold.

"Maybe," Sakura offered. "I don't know."

Ino leaned back, looking Sakura over with a narrowed, critical eye. "Did you hack your hair off yourself again? It looks awful."

Sakura didn't say anything, her gaze darting back and forth between Ino's eyes, apprehensive.

"I guess it doesn't really matter what you wanted," Ino said suddenly, running her hands through the back of Sakura's hair, trying to get some volume into it. "Still, I suppose it took a lot of courage for you to come back here." She stopped, one hand on Sakura's cheek, the other resting on the side of her neck. "Or maybe it took none at all," she mused, pensive.

"Ino –"

Ino leaned forward suddenly, as if to kiss Sakura, but the other girl struggled to keep their faces at least a few centimetres apart, her fingers tangled in Ino's shirt as she clenched her fists at her shoulders. Ino's face suddenly split into a feral grin – it seemed to Sakura like she showed more teeth when she smiled now – her gaze resting on Sakura's lips for a moment before she found her eyes again, her stare intimidating, merciless. "Do you even know what you want, Sakura?"

Sakura forced herself to look away. "I know what I want," she murmured. "I just don't know how to find it."

"Oh?" Ino was closing the gap between them, centimetre by centimetre, until their faces were touching. "You didn't find it last night?" Her voice was barely audible.

"No," Sakura whispered. Her eyes closed slowly when Ino kissed her, an ethereal touch of their lips.

"But you'll keep looking," Ino asserted, her words broken by more kisses.

"Yes," Sakura relented.

Ino pulled away, her hand still on Sakura's cheek, admiring the other girl's gaunt beauty. Sakura opened her eyes slowly, looking at Ino in defeat and helplessness. Ino's cruel confidence dissipated rather suddenly, and she let her hand fall from Sakura's cheek, fingertips trailing along her jaw. She pivoted on her heel, walking back into the kitchen to grab her purse. "I've got to close the shop tonight," she said brusquely. She set to work quickly unlocking the door, her fingers moving swiftly, dextrously. "I might not be back until late," she added. She pulled open the door and stepped through. Then, as if in afterthought, she hesitated and turned back to find her guest.

Sakura was just standing there meekly, arms crossed, facing Ino but with her eyes averted. Ino was already halfway out of her apartment, her left hand gripping the edge of the door. She stared at Sakura's distracted expression for a long moment, noticing how that grisly, pallid colour had been replaced by a much less alarming porcelain tone, her eyes no longer bloodshot nor quite as sunken and frightened as they had been the night before. There was a mark on her cheek, as if of the faintest bruise, and Ino felt an unwelcome jolt in her gut as she wondered if it had been her hand that left it. She swallowed her discomfort at the thought, put it out of her mind, her eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly as she spoke. "Will you be here when I get back?"

Sakura met Ino's gaze and smiled guiltily. It made her look startlingly young. Then she shrugged, her eyes falling to her feet. "No one else knows I'm here," she said quietly.

Ino wondered if Sakura was implying that she had nowhere else to go, or that she shouldn't have even been in Konoha at all. She was curious, really. Indeed, she was tempted to ask the other girl outright what exactly the circumstances of her return to Konoha were, but then again, Ino had places to go, and things to do. She shrugged dismissively. "Alright," she said. Then she pulled the door closed after her.

Ino tried her best not to think about Sakura as she headed for the stairs, and failed spectacularly. When she had met Sakura's eyes the night before, Ino had forced herself to avoid seeing the old Sakura again, to avoid falling into the same old traps that had bled her before. Now, though, she was rapidly coming to the realization that the Sakura she was leaving alone in her apartment simply wasn't the same girl that she had known for so many years. She was so downtrodden, so broken, so afraid as to be almost unrecognizable. And this was little solace to Ino.

When Ino looked at Sakura, she didn't know what to feel anymore. She hated her, but could no longer see in Sakura what she had so despised for these two wretched years. She wanted to love her, but wasn't even sure if Sakura was capable of loving her back anymore. More than anything, though, she pitied her: a double-edged sword. Ino found herself torn between contempt for the other girl's state – a sickly vein of triumph that made her feel empowered, made her feel guilty – and the undeniable urge to save her - from her loneliness, from her pain, from herself.

Her hatred was shallow, and her sympathy dark. Ino wasn't sure why she had let Sakura stay. Perhaps she really did love the other girl unconditionally. Perhaps she really did want to destroy her. Or maybe it had nothing to do with Sakura at all; perhaps Ino had become some sort of emotional masochist, drawing Sakura ever closer as the knife in her back dug deeper and deeper.

But Ino was tired of introspection. For two horrible years she had seen herself through different eyes, finding faults in every word and every action. She had become convinced that there was something wrong with her, deeply, fundamentally, something that had made Sakura turn on her, again and again. In the end, it had driven her past the point of caring. She had made a decision; she could either dwell on these emotionally fatal flaws or she could accept them. Her change of heart, however, went far beyond mere acceptance. Ino had celebrated everything that was wrong with her. She thrived on dominating others, on treating them with cold disdain, on being the bitch. Ino had become a creature decidedly darker than the inherently vulnerable person Sakura had left.

And she never thought for a moment that she had made the wrong decision.

But that hurt, that confusion, that helplessness that Ino saw in Sakura now was throwing it all into question. Sakura had become a little girl lost, and Ino didn't know if she was seeking her out to save her, or if she was hunting her down to devour her.

The air was almost surprisingly cool as Ino stepped out of her apartment building and started down the street. The sun was more than an hour short of its zenith and shadows still cloaked the street heavily. Familiar faces turned to her every once in a while, friendly greetings from the people she had grown up around, kind smiles, passing words. Ino scarcely acknowledged most of them, offering at most a smile to Chouji's father, Akimichi Choza, and a heartless wave to Shikamaru's mother, that darkly severe woman.

She missed her old team mates. It seemed like all the boys she had grown up with, grown so close to, were gone, either always out on missions or having left the village entirely. Shikamaru, Chouji, Kiba, Shino, Neji, Lee and Naruto, along with a great number of the most able-bodied chuunin and jounin were off doing their part for allied Sunagakure, drained of blood and entangled in its own country's war. Sakura had gone as well, with Hinata and Tenten too, who was always trying to prove that women were more efficient killers than men could ever be. It seemed that Ino was the only one who got left behind. She had stopped doing missions only a few months ago, and while at first it had been a relief, an entirely necessary psychological and emotional panacea, now she was starting to get antsy. Perpetually bored with the more mundane side of village life, Ino was craving the nostalgia of old times. She missed her friends. This life of moments, of unfamiliar faces that were there and then gone again in the span of an evening, of indulgence without satisfaction, was not enough.

Maybe she would volunteer for a few missions again she considered as she reached the flower shop, having already dug the keys out of her purse. She had kept herself in as good a physical shape as ever, if only from habit. Godaime Hokage would, of course, probably submit her to an intense psychological examination before consenting to any of it, if only to remind her of the risks of war, to warn her that everything she had gone through may very well happen again.

As if Ino needed a reminder. She wasn't likely to ever forget that last botched mission. And even if she had, one glance at Sakura's glassy eyes, one touch of the seemingly countless freshly healed abrasions, one taste of her sanguine kisses served as reminder enough. Killers since earliest childhood, even the nearly two decades of exposure to violence did little to protect them from the rigours of this cruel life. War, it seemed, would break them all, one way or another.

Until then, though, Ino resigned herself bitterly to her flower arrangements.