Chapter 106 - Cleaner Fish

Hajime barely had enough strength in his legs to return to his grandfather's house. And this became very evident when, as soon as he made it into the kitchen, he collapsed into a chair.

Karai was the first to attend to him. "Hajime? Brother, what's the matter?" She put a hand on his shoulder, and his skin was cold and trembling. "MOM!"

Ino appeared. "Hajime, you're back? Oh, honey, are you all right?"

"I'm… I'm fine, Mom, just… a little overwhelmed," he said.

"Well, come on, let's get you to the couch," she said, offering a shoulder to get him to the living room. "Come on, now."

Takeru was the only one in the living room, spread out with his head against a couch arm with a magazine. Ino had forbidden him from leaving the house, at least for now, for fear of Sasuke running into him.

He left before Ino could tell him to get out, glaring at her like she was vermin. Ino kept her eyes lowered.

She set Hajime down on the couch. "Karai, give your brother and me some privacy, we need to talk," she said.

"All right," Karai said, and left.

Hajime thought it wouldn't have made a difference—he didn't mind Karai, truly—but his sister's absence made things considerably easier for him, in telling his mother what had happened.

"So you're—you're going to take responsibility?" she said, once he had explained enough.

Hajime nodded. He had his hands clasped between his legs, to keep from shaking too badly. "When it's born, yeah."

"Oh, Hajime…" She ran her hand down his back again. "And is this what she wanted?"

"She—she wanted to keep it in the first place, but they won't let her, so… so I am. For both of our sakes." His forearms began to quake, and Ino could feel spasms running up and down his back. "…Mom, I'm so scared, though, I don't know what to do… There's no way I'm ready for this…"

Ino put her arm around him, hushing him. "Don't worry, don't worry, I'm here for you, all right?" she said. "Besides, I know you're..." She swallowed. "You're going to be a terrific—father." An uncomfortable forced smile made her speech quicken. "You were so good with Inou and Karai when they were little, anyways, and you'll have me to help you with everything else."

Hajime didn't say anything, just leaning against her shoulder, miserably, for a very long time.

They told the rest of the family at dinner. Ino did most of the explaining.

"Sometime in January, Hajime is going to be taking in a new member of the household. And his… son or daughter is going to be a little… different, so it might be a bit more difficult than usual to take care of." Ino's voice was practiced and convincingly smooth. "So I'm going to need all of your help to make sure that things go well, okay?"

"Different how," Takeru said. He had his arms crossed at his seat, and his foot balanced on his knee. "Is it gonna be retarded or something?"

"Takeru!" Ino hissed. "Please!"

"Or maybe it won't have arms, or eyes. I mean, that's what I heard happens when you cross-breed like this." He wasn't looking at any of them. "Either way, I'm not helping with it at all. It's not my problem that Hajime was stupid enough not to use protection. Really, older brother, even I know that."

"Takeru!" Ino had her hands on the table. "Please have some compassion."

"Why should I?" Takeru replied. "It's his fault, and it was preventable. I have no sympathy."

From her seat next to him, Karai squeezed Hajime's hand, keeping her head down.

Ino stood. "Takeru, leave the kitchen. I want you in the living room."

Takeru got out of his chair. "Fine."

And as he passed behind her, he whispered, "You whore."

Inoichi grabbed him by the arm before he could leave the room. "Apologize to your mother." His voice rumbled with age and anger.

"I'm not sorry, because it's true," Takeru replied.

Ino, standing in place by her chair, had turned sunburn-red, and was gasping for air. Her skinny shoulders moved up and down with every desperate breath.

"Apologize to your mother," Inoichi said, again, gripping his arm tighter.

Takeru's expression lowered, and he glared back at the rest of the family. "Fine, I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I'll get out of your hair."

He removed himself from his grandfather's grip, and left the house.

"Takeru!" Ino called out, weakly.

"Ino, don't bother," Inoichi said. "He'll be back. He has nowhere else to go."

(And this wasn't particularly true. But both of them knew that it was unlikely that Takeru would return "home.")

(Because that meant returning to Sasuke.)

Ino took one last deep breath in, sighed, and sat back down.

Karai was quick to change the atmosphere. "Don't worry, brother, I'll definitely help," she said. "And, hey, I'll be the same age as you were when I was born!"

"…ah, I guess you will be…" Hajime said.

(He was also only one year older than his parents had been when he was born.)

(Neither of these facts brought him comfort.)

And the conversation continued on with Inou adding in a half-hearted word of support, and Karai bringing up the subject of baby names, which Hajime brushed off as best he could.

But all Ino could hear was Takeru's voice.

You whore, you whore, you whore.

Time passed quietly, otherwise. The city had settled into the business of pleasing the tourists, since the Kages were at the business of deciding which of the chuunin candidates deserved promotions, and settling international issues on the side. This usually took several days.

Chuunin guards had stopped by earlier that day to confirm that the Uchiha family was in Inoichi's care. Both Ino and Inoichi asked that they not tell Sasuke where they were. Ino refused to go into details as to why, but Inoichi mentioned, quietly, that there had been a domestic violence incident, and that quickly shut them up.

"Daddy, you didn't have to say that, Sasuke never—hits me or anything…" Ino said, softly, once they were gone.

"You came to me for a reason, darling. And I want him as far away from you as possible for as long as possible, all right?" he said.

Ino just lowered her head, feeling unnecessarily shamed.

Takeru drifted back, here and there, mostly for meals. But he slept elsewhere, and was out of the house most of the day.

(Like Sasuke, he liked to take walks when he was frustrated, though he distracted himself with books and women otherwise.)

Karai seemed to be healing quickly, though Ino had a feeling she was just putting on a good face for Hajime's sake. And Inou was quiet as ever, but he at least joined them for lunch and dinner, and watched TV with his siblings.

Once Nadeshiko started going back to work, Ino knew that the doldrums had truly set in.

And her issues began to unravel. Much to her discontent.

She didn't want to be bothered, her problems were so small and mostly her own fault, there was no reason for her to be stewing over them.

But she was losing sleep; night after night she found herself at 3 AM with a mug of tea in the kitchen of her father's house, and she'd wake up on the living room couch with a blanket thrown over her, with the television still on.

(You whore, you whore, you whore.)

It was with a great reluctance that Ino picked up the phone one afternoon and dialed the Haruno residence, on a day that she knew Sakura had off.

"Hi, uh—Sakura? Are you free today?"

(Sakura had heard pieces of the upset that had trickled through the city, though Naruto had advised her to give Ino her space, in case something happened.)

"Of course, Ino, what is it?"

"Do you want to—meet for lunch or something, I've just been stuck inside the house and I could use the… time out."

Sakura, of course, agreed.

They met an hour later at a coffee shop. And Sakura was immediately worried.

There were deep creases under Ino's eyes, and she hadn't put on all of her makeup, only bothering with eyeliner and lipstick.

Sakura didn't even bother touching her coffee, though Ino sipped at her tea with trembling hands. The cup rattled whenever she put it back onto its saucer.

"Ino, what's the matter?" Sakura said, when she couldn't stand it any more. "What was it that you wanted to talk about?"

"Where in the world do I start…" Ino said, rubbing one of her temples. "Well, um… Well, Sasuke… he, um. He disowned Hajime, a few days ago."

"What?" Sakura said. "Why, what happened?"

(Even though she already knew, to some extent.)

"He… he got a girl pregnant. And they'd been together for a while already, but Sasuke had no idea and when he finally found out he just… he just exploded, started throwing Hajime's things out of our front door, and we fought and…" Ino lowered her head. "I just… he eventually stormed out of the house, so I took the kids and I left, and we're living with my father right now."

"You—you left him?" Sakura said.

"I know, it was really selfish of me, but I had to…" Ino replied. "It's not permanent, anyways…"

"Selfish? No! No, no, no, Ino, that was the right thing to do, if he was terrorizing your family like that," Sakura said. "Has he been bothering you since?"

"No, I don't even know where he is," Ino said. "I've been too busy making sure that the kids are okay, especially Hajime…"

"Well, are they?"

Ino nodded, weakly. "Hajime… his girlfriend is a Hyuuga, and they're not allowing her to keep it, so he's going to raise it after it's born. And I'm going to… help, of course, I have to, but it's just all so sudden and I can't really…" She couldn't bring herself to say more, and drowned the silence in another shivering sip of tea.

"A Hyuuga…?"

(Sakari had been very worried and fidgety lately, and she said it had something to do with one of her teammates.)

(A Hyuuga, female, on the same team as Hajime…)

"You don't mean Hyuuga Ninako?" Sakura said.

Ino nodded, again. "Yes, her. That poor girl, Hajime's utterly beside herself, I can't even imagine how she must be feeling…"

"This whole thing is awful, Ino. I'm so sorry, is there anything I can do to help?" she said. "Do you need food made, because I'm sure Lee would be-"

But Ino was shaking her head. "No, I don't need… charity, I'm just… I'm being selfish and hysterical, aren't I," she said, reaching for her tea again.

"Ino, hardly!" Sakura said. "I can't imagine how stressed you must be right now, with this."

"I should be able to handle it," Ino said. Pale-golden tea spilled onto the saucer from the force of her putting it down. "I've handled worse…"

"Worse?" Sakura said.

"Forget I said anything, sorry," Ino said. "Sorry for wasting your time."

She stood, but Sakura grabbed her arm. "Ino, sit down and talk to me. You are not wasting my time. What else has happened?"

Ino closed her eyes, almost wincing, before sitting again.

"Just… Sasuke was a little upset by the chuunin tournament results, is all…" she said, her voice high, a mocking imitation of nonchalance.

"Upset?" Sakura said. "Why would he be upset, your children made it into first and second place!"

"Oh, you know how he is, he's always got something to be upset about, it's nothing…" Ino said. "There was just a minor argument, nothing big, I got through it… This is no worse, I should just stop letting it bother me…"

"Ino, come on…" Sakura said. "Stop… denying these things to yourself. Things are bad enough that you've left your husband. You should be bothered!"

"Sakura, please, we're in public…" Ino whispered, lowering her body closer to the table. "I don't want people talking about this…"

"What, the fact that you finally… stood up for yourself for once?" Sakura said, a ribbon of anger ripping into her voice.

The glass-like look on Ino's face in return made Sakura instantly regret her words.

Ino looked like she was about to cry. She held her forehead up with one of her hands. "What the hell happened to my life…" she said, shaking her head. "I mean, for pity's sake, Sakura, I'm going to be a grandmother before I'm forty-five!"

"Well, um." Sakura looked around. Nobody seemed to be staring. "Well, we both married and started having children relatively early, so I suppose that's to be expected from our own children…"

Ino's hand moved from her forehead to her eyes, and her shoulders began to shudder rhythmically.

"Ino, Ino, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to make you cry, I swear…" Sakura said. She reached across the table to put her hand on Ino's free arm. "Please, it's going to be okay…"

Ino just shook her head. "No, no, no… Not with Sasuke, I don't even know how things can be okay with him… I mean, after what he did to Inou and then Hajime, and I have no idea what he could do to Takeru now that he knows…"

"Wait, Ino, what are you talking about? What did he do to Inou?" Sakura struggled with Ino's tear-infected words.

But Ino kept going. "He hasn't even tried to find me, he must be so angry at me if he doesn't even want to find me… I'm such a bad wife…"

The last five words pulled on Sakura especially hard. "A bad wife? Ino, don't say that, how are you in any way a bad wife?"

"Oh, it's just… I can't hardly say or even do anything without making him angry, and I've done everything I can to keep the children happy, too, but…" She took her hand away from her head, now, and was shaking her head more severely. "I can't do enough, nothing is enough…"

"Ino, that's not your fault, that's his," Sakura said. "Sasuke's always had… anger issues, but have they been getting worse?"

"I know that, he just has a temper, it hasn't been getting worse," Ino said. There was a snap of her old voice, for a moment, but it quickly disappeared. "I just… I don't even want to think about what he… what he could do to me if I tried to go back now, but I know he'll just get angrier if I keep hiding like this, I don't know what to do…" She began crying again.

Sakura stroked Ino's arm with her thumb, a troubling and painful anxiety building in her chest.

Her suspicions were slowly being confirmed, and more.

"I have nothing to complain about, absolutely… nothing at all…" Ino was mostly talking to herself, now, sniffing deeply when she breathed. "So why is everything so awful? I married the man of my… my dreams, didn't I? And I have a nice house, and money, and children, and just… Where did it all go wrong? Why can't I just be happy with that? Why am I so… fucking ungrateful?"

Sakura couldn't say anything in return, and she doubted that Ino would have let her.

"I just don't know what to do, Sakura…!" she sobbed, quietly. "I don't even know why I'm talking to you, it's not gonna solve anything…"

"…well, it's a start," Sakura replied. "Talking helps."

"Shut up," Ino said, and sniffed again. She wiped one of her eyes, and saw the smear of eyeliner left behind on her finger. "Oh, damn it, look, my makeup is ruined, I must look like a mess, ugh, what if somebody sees me…"

"Ino, you look fine," Sakura said. "Just take deep breaths and calm yourself down, you're going to be okay. Just keep talking to me, it's all right. I'll stay with you as long as you need me."

"No, I should go, somebody might hear…" Ino began out of her chair again.

But Sakura kept her grip on Ino's arm, and she stayed. "We can go somewhere else if you want more privacy. But I want you to talk to me, okay? And, Ino—Ino." She pulled on Ino's arm again, to get her back into her chair. "Look at me. What you did, leaving Sasuke and going to your father's house—that was the right thing to do. It was very brave, and it was the best thing for you and your children. Okay? And if Sasuke tries anything—ANYTHING—then he'll have to deal with me, and with Naruto. We won't let anything happen to you. Okay?"

Ino kept her head turned away. "You should stay out of this, I don't want more people knowing about this…"

"Ino, this isn't your fault, you don't have to worry about people blaming you," Sakura said.

"No, word's already getting around. I know, I can tell. Everyone's talking about the wife of that Uchiha, fighting his own son in broad daylight. And there's me, the horrible wife that didn't stop this from happening."

"Ino, it's not your fault!" Sakura said again.

And why do you care so damn much about what other people think of you?! Jeez, woman!

But Sakura remembered the last snap in the conversation, and how things had gone downhill from there. So she kept her mouth shut.

"Look, I don't even know why I did this," Ino said. "I'm going back to my father's. Don't tell anyone what I said, I can handle everything on my own…"

And before Sakura could stop her, Ino slipped her arm out of her hand and left the shop.

Sakura paid the bill for the both of them, and went home. She gave Lee a very long hug when she got back, full of frustrated sighs.

"What happened with Ino-san?" he asked, when she pulled away.

"Nothing," Sakura replied. "Nothing happened. That's the problem."

The talk hadn't helped Ino much, either. The entire walk back to the Yamanaka compound, she was trying to keep her face from view, so nobody would see the smear of black around her eyes, and her burst-blood cell cheeks.

And her thoughts dove and made grasps at reason.

Where had everything gone wrong?

Surely, whatever the reason was, it was her fault. It always was, with Sasuke.

She went to her old bedroom, once she arrived home and had washed her face. It was the middle of the day, so neither of her daughters were inside, and she loosed her hair and laid down in her bed like she had done when she was a younger girl.

She drifted to sleep with a familiar notion floating through her mind, almost comforting in its consistency.

Twenty-three years ago, he had asked her if she wanted to help rebuild his clan.

That was how he had proposed.

Some nights, more than others, she would waste no time in re-thinking her answer, and coming to the same conclusion.

But this afternoon took much longer.

She was asleep before anything that satisfied her came to mind.