Intermission: Recollection

Author's Note: Flashback! I told you it was coming. Counterpart to the prologue.

"Don't touch me," Sakura hissed. Her eyes were averted meekly and her expression was pained and guilty, though all this was overshadowed by the way she lashed out, slapping Ino's hand away with unwarranted violence.

Ino felt that familiar ache rising in her throat, that pain in her chest, and she bit down hard on it, gritting her teeth so hard she thought she might break a few. "This is bullshit, Sakura,' she pointed out, her blithe tone forced, mangled. "Don't tell me you've changed your mind."

"I meant what I said," Sakura told her. "I don't want to see you anymore."

Ino let her head fall back, her grin so full of teeth. "Ha!" she shouted at the ceiling, walking back a few staggering steps, laughing bitterly, shaking her head. "Bullshit," she sneered.

"No, Ino---"

"I never realized how much you fucking lie!" Ino snarled at her, with sudden uncontrollable vehemence.

Sakura suddenly seemed to find her backbone, and her eyes darkened. "I'm not like that, Ino," she muttered. She crossed her arms tightly across her chest.

"Not like what?"

"Not like you!"

Ino was still laughing, not so much because she found any of this particularly humorous but because it infuriated the other girl. She was trying to mask her own feelings, the hurt and the outrage, the disgust at herself for ever being vulnerable enough that the other girl's words would pain her so. "I never forced you into any of this, Sakura," Ino told her matter-of-factly. "You were never anything but willing."

"Are you really so full of yourself? Thinking that anyone and everyone falls for your charms, regardless of gender. Flaunting your body, whoring out that pretty face…"

"You're awfully narrow-minded if you think that this had anything to do with gender," Ino hissed.

"And you're awfully single-minded if you've managed to construe my feelings of friendship towards you as lust."

Ino was still smiling, her eyebrows raised in disbelief. She crossed one arm over her stomach and bent her other at the elbow, her hand on her own cheek, little finger just touching her lower lip. "I can't believe these lies you're spouting, Sakura." She sounded deceptively benign. "There is no way our relationship could have lasted this long if it was so one-sided."

"Apparently it could," Sakura retorted bluntly.

"Every kiss," Ino mumbled contemplatively. "Every touch, every promise, every whisper." Her eyebrow quirked, challengingly. "Every moan." Sakura's eye twitched almost imperceptibly, though Ino caught it. Her grin suddenly turned smug, insolent. "You're a terrible, terrible liar, Sakura."

"Stop calling me that," Sakura warned.

"Then stop lying." Ino's voice was like crimson silk, seductive if only for the promised threat, the thread of violence that wound its way around every word. Sakura watched her lips when she spoke, the superficiality of her own threats obvious. Ino couldn't stop grinning.

"Stop looking at me like that," Sakura said.

"It takes two, Sakura," Ino spoke to her condescendingly, self-assuredly, so certain of her own advantage. "You know how this works. I undress you, you undress me." Sakura looked away when Ino dropped her voice to a sultry whisper. "I kiss you, you fuck me."

"It was a mistake," Sakura piped up suddenly. Then, almost as an afterthought: "To think that you would ever change."

"Don't fix it if it ain't broke," Ino chuckled.

"I can't believe your arrogance." Sakura finally raised her eyes from the floor. "You're a disgusting person, Ino."

"If you say that to me again, I'll throw a fucking knife in your leg."

"Try me," Sakura spat.

Ino paused for a moment, looking Sakura right in the eye. Then, as if in preparation to raise her arms, to strike the pink-haired kunoichi, the slightest tensing of the muscles in her shoulders, the slightest shifting in her weight. That was all the encouragement Sakura needed, and she threw out a fist. Ino was too close to dodge the long-armed swipe, and she caught Sakura's knuckles across the face. She stumbled back, one hand on her face, laughing as she cried out in pain, taking a few staggering steps sideways. She bent double, one hand on her knee, the other covering the left side of her face. "Ow," she said. "You hit me in the fucking eye." She straightened up suddenly, inhaled through her teeth, and lowered her hand. Her left eye was watering, and she blinked rapidly.

"Don't—" Sakura warned, but Ino was already stepping into her. She blocked the brutal uppercut but didn't catch the knee that sank into her stomach, driving the air from her lungs. Ino pressed her forearm across Sakura's throat, forcing her upright and pushing her back towards the wall, intending to pin her in place. Sakura regained her balance, set her feet, and caught Ino suddenly by one wrist, then the other. Ino grit her teeth in sudden expectation of pain, feeling that surge of inhuman strength in Sakura's arms, and felt her knees buckle when the pink-haired girl forced her arms back behind her with such ferocity that her elbows seemed like they nearly touched.

It felt like she might tear Ino's arms right out of their sockets, but the blonde wouldn't give her the benefit of crying for mercy. She bit down on her scream, allowing her pain to manifest only as a strangled sound in her throat. Sakura was suddenly pressed up against her, her chin on Ino's shoulder, chest heaving as she struggled to catch her breath again.

Ino pressed her cheek against Sakura's, her mouth at her ear, and forced herself to laugh as if in wry amusement. "I knew you couldn't keep your hands off me," she joked inappropriately.

"I warned you," Sakura whispered, as if she regretting having to hurt the other girl.

"Don't apologize," Ino sneered sarcastically. "I'm rather enjoying this opportunity to get closer to you."

Sakura forced her arms back even further momentarily, but Ino's sound of pain sounded more sensual than anything. As if in disgust, Sakura suddenly released her and, in a continuation of the fluid movement, shoved Ino away from her. Ino crashed backwards into her kitchen table, taking a moment to get her legs back under her, wincing as she brought her arms forward. Her left shoulder hurt so badly she feared briefly that Sakura had done damage.

"I hate you," Sakura said. "I hate your insufferable arrogance. I hate that ugly sneer."

"You just hate the confidence that you could never have," Ino replied. "You're still that same little girl, hiding her face behind her hair. I don't think you've changed at all."

"Perhaps not," Sakura muttered. "I think I was better off back then, anyway, before you tried to contaminate me."

Ino refused to let herself be hurt by Sakura's words, clenching her fists suddenly, converting her pain into anger. She had done so much for Sakura over the years, picked her up whenever she stumbled, encouraged her to build her strength with that old schoolgirl rivalry, was there for her when Uchiha broke her heart, and Sakura had nothing but contempt for her, nothing but lies. Sakura was suddenly rigid, unyielding, too strong.

This wasn't her Sakura. Sakura was supposed to be kind, empathetic, welcoming. Ino bit her lip. Sakura used to hug her whenever she saw her, a little too close, a little too tightly. She used to sneak in little kisses whenever they turned a corner and found themselves alone for a mere moment. She used to blush whenever Ino caught her staring at her, could never suppress her grins when Ino found out that she was only pretending to be asleep, had eyes only for her when they were out in a crowd.

Ino wasn't sure what had happened to her Sakura, though she dreaded the answer to the question of who was at fault. Perhaps Ino was too liberal, too flirtatious, too willing to hide the true extent of her relationship with the other girl. Ino's guilty conscience told her that this is what they should be fighting over, that this is what she should apologize for.

But this wasn't what Sakura was saying. And so she didn't apologize. She was being deliberately cruel, and suddenly Ino didn't feel like the one at fault anymore. "I don't think I want to hear anything else you have to say," she told Sakura coldly.

Sakura opened her mouth to say something, stopped herself, changed her mind. "Good bye, Ino." She said. She turned, headed for the door, left Ino standing there with her aching arms crossed. She paused at the door, pulling it open as she looked back, met Ino's eyes one last time.

"Go to hell, Sakura," Ino said to her, and she turned her back on the other girl before Sakura had even pulled the door shut behind her.