I'm slowly coming back and updating again. Please, be gentle. Thank you in advance for your patience. :)

-X-

Kiba presses his hands on the floor, his ears ringing, his head sliced open by his own pants. They erupt louder and louder, pressed thickly, moist, then nauseous at the back of his throat. Around him, everything is deafening and slicing through him repeatedly. His terror barely contained the whispers of his own mind racing. He chokes on his breaths, and bile, and around him rises screams. Then, silence, muffled whines. The sound of his pants recoils in his mind, but there is no peace. Kiba presses himself lower on the floor and he wishes he could walk away. If only he could move. If only the lump in his throat didn't rip through him every time he tries to force it down.

He doesn't understand how suddenly it moves next to him. How the screams roll back in, explode above his head. The light is blinding even if he sees nothing but her and his own shadow.

Kiba is used to her being a habit, a creeping thought, never invited nor sought. As always, she is merely there. This is why he doesn't recognize her at first. She has inhabited his mind, his gestures for far too long; he has never imagined her there. Here. In front of him. Pure chance, pure terror. He meets her own wide-eyed stare. Their gaze clash, hold on to each other.

"On the ground or I'll shoot!"

Somehow, the screams, the demands fade over Kiba's head and he mouths something. A warning or a scream. Something. Anything.

The fourth time they meet, her mouth is stretched with blood. And he is thrust back by strident echoes; ripped flesh and metal.

Three smoking cartridges roll to his knees.

Then, nothing but darkness.

-X-

The Bank

by Clementive

-X-

Ino makes him move.

Kiba can't help but think perhaps he is waking up or dying or both. His hands press on her wounds harder than they have pressed on the floor. He has only blinked since they shot her. Around him, the bank is picked up, scraped off the floor, pieced back together. Police officers ask questions, guide people out and there are still him and her. His fingers sink deeper, his palms red and slippery but somewhat steady. He shakes his head because someone else must be guiding his hands. He must be dreaming. He has only blinked once... Blood, screams, cartridges. Now he's touching her. Then, then, then. Nothing but darkness.

He mutters incoherently while her eyelids flicker. Her hair wet, matted, spread in red shades around her head. Her skin is cold. He presses harder.

Ino makes him shake.

Kiba never knows what is inside him until they meet again. Until he's yelling from the top of a mountain and trying to kiss her, or behind bars, or kissing her breathless at a party. He is still the lost boy who forces fate to meet her again and again. Kiba knows it's pathetic. He also knows he should remember something. Perhaps the dried blood on his knuckles, how sirens and police officers swarmed in the bank, their own weapons gleaming.

Without resistance, Kiba slips away from her when they come to pick her up. He feels like it is his own his body riddled with bullets and he is nailed him to the floor. He can never leave. Never forget her face, the three cartridges. The rest is slipping away from his grasp like blood, like echoing screams. Paramedics roll her away, running, yelling, and hooking her up to machines. He stares at how his body has become the island to her blood.

He feels calm, when he knows he should be enraged. Why did she stand up? Why can't he remember anything but the darkness? Kiba looks down at his hands; he's still trembling, his teeth chatter. His suit is ruined. He lost his tie somewhere. When he looks around again, they are finally coming back for him.

The police officers speak to him gently. They reassure him. They say "hero" again and again while he stares at her blood around him, soaking his pants. Her blood laces his muscles with lead. Then, they press their hands on his shoulder and he's looking at the coldly glistering handcuffs at their waist. He wonders why he thinks he deserves them.

There's nothing but darkness, her mouth where her blood gurgled, and her sides where her blood gushed.

Nothing is gleaming. He hopes.

Because if he turns and he sees the gun behind him, he will remember that he fired it. He will remember that the only darkness is inside him. He will remember why he waits for the officers' attention to turn away from him before slipping the gun against the bare skin of his back, tucked safely in his waistband.

There are five cartridges at his knees.

-X-

Kiba stands in front of the door of the yellow house.

His face twitches. He doesn't remember why he is there. Earlier, he stopped himself going up the front walkway and now, he stands aimlessly. He is too calm or too tired, but the old anger doesn't come back. He wonders if it means he can finally turn away from his mother's house, move on from the screams and insults and how he looked too much like his father.

His mother chooses for him when she opens the door and her eyes narrow. Her lips pinched on her cigarette, she lets the garbage bag fall at her feet, her movements clipped, then slowing. Kiba remains frozen in front of her and her house and how they both pushed him to climb mountains in the midst of winter. Somehow he knows he went back because he can't go forward. His mother takes a drag from her cigarette before crossing her arms, observing him with a scowl. He sees the fight on her face; how torn she is between holding the door open or flipping him off. This fight has been his entire childhood: loving him, or not loving him. Blaming or not blaming. Like his father or not like his father.

Kiba stares up at the blue sky and almost laughs. She was always torn when it came to him, while for Hanna, everything had always been certain. Just. Motherly.

He only came to ask her if he was a monster, but it means nothing without the anger, the hatred, and the abuse. He hasn't seen his mother since he left for college. She never calls and he never finishes dialling her number.

"I saw your picture in the newspaper. A bank robbery, huh?" she breaks the silence and he looks back down at the open door. Kiba blinks and her back is already retreating. Only the dense darkness coiling, soaking the narrow corridor remains. As before, the curtains are drawn over most windows, except in the kitchen, a dash of light in the darkness.

He makes it up the porch before he has to stop himself again. He used to be afraid of the dark, he remembers. His sister teased him, but still bought him a night-life. They never discussed it. Just as they never mentioned their dad's disappearance or their mother's short-temper. None of this matters now. He grew up angry and abandoned. Kiba grew up with features that mostly belonged to his father and every time he looked at his mother, it was an offence from the man who left her. Despite it all, he's still lost and afraid and waiting on the porch for his mother to find him. Whether she lost him or he wandered off the track on his own doesn't matter. Because all he sees now is her back in the kitchen, the smoke of her cigarette draping her in semi-darkness.

He picks up the garbage bag she left behind and drops it on the sidewalk. He breathes deeply as he walks back up the stairs. Softly, he closes the door.

'I'm not ready to forgive you,' he doesn't say out loud.

'I love you even if you fucked me up,' he wishes he could say.

Instead, Kiba sits at the kitchen table, reaches for her pack of cigarettes and lights it up. His mother keeps cutting the carrots, his back to him. He never realized that she would age, that her skin would pinch her bones and her elbows would wrinkle. She is older. He is older. But nothing has changed between them.

"You couldn't bring your own stuff, kid?"

"My face was in the newspaper, you can spare a cigarette, ma."

He watches her stiffened as she snorts. He waits for more; her whirling toward him with the knife, her face distorted. The memory tugs at him and still, she doesn't face him.

"How's the Yamanaka girl?"

Kiba takes another drag and tastes nothing but ashes.

"I wanted to see you first."

"What?" she snaps, finally turning toward him. Her dark eyes pierce through him. Slowly, she wipes her hands on her apron, one finger at the time, twisting and untwisting the apron, before giving up and ripping it from her waist. Briskly, she tosses the wrinkled ball of fabric on the counter.

"I wanted to see if you would believe your son a hero."

There are now small wrinkles around her eyes and her lips are drawn in more severe lines than he remembers. She has the same tattoos as him on her cheeks. He got them when he was 13, thinking he would look more like her. Less like his dad.

He lets his cigarette fall in the ashtray when she says nothing.

Kiba grabs his keys and stands up. His chair winces, scrapes on the floor. As he walks toward the door, he reflects that there used to be a carpet in the kitchen. The sound of knocked chair were always muffled. The sound of her angry steps crept on him, muffled, predatory-like. Shameful. Because he received all the words she wished she could have spoken to his father. Instead, there was just him, left behind. Her son.

It all comes back to him; how the darkness started in their well-lit kitchen with his night-light and cumulated as a mountain of snow glistering under blood-orange sunlight. Ino's golden hair was the just part of the circle. The little light he always clung to.

-X-

Kiba stands in front of the hospital room. He plays with his rings, tugs at his earrings, as long as he keeps moving. As long as she keeps living. Even if she knows what he did. Abruptly, the door opens and the nurse holds it back for him, smiling softly at him.

"Go on, sweetheart."

He gulps and walks past her before he could change his mind. A part of him wants to run. The same part of him who repeats everything he has learnt in law school: you remember nothing. You never go back on the scene of a crime.

He stops short when he sees her lying on the bed, held down by tubes and bruises. Her head rolls toward him, her blue eyes adrift and she smiles slowly.

"Hey," he creaks and the motion pulls him toward her, on a chair. He seemed to unfold, spread thin and tired. He looks around him, lost and unfocused, as if he couldn't contain all his movements, all his limbs reaching for her.

"Hey, yourself."

Her hand weighs nothing in his. He has to stop himself from swallowing her whole, folding her in his arms and walking away. She is the scene of the crime.

"Why did you stand up?" Kiba shakes himself, but it comes out as a growl. Predatory-like. His mother-like.

"I stood up because I saw you..." Ino runs her hands on her face, her body violently shaking with tears and laughter. "It's not romantic, not even smart. I just wanted... I was about to say hi, then everyone was on the floor..." She pants deeply as her hands reach her hair. They pull slightly. She closes her eyes and doesn't wipe the tears. "Now, I'm just in pain."

She chokes on both laughter and tears and he buries in face in the sheets sprung tight around her.

"You stood up too." She murmurs.

Ino looks at him and Kiba sees himself, faded and disheveled in her pale eyes. He sees himself fighting like he used to. He sees himself hungry for blood, angry against the world. He shakes his head. He needs to bury the lost boy.

"I remember nothing." His words are clipped, professional. His lawyer voice.

"Kiba..."

"When I saw you, I thought I could stay." He cuts her off because he can't tell her how he remembers standing up and burying his fists in the other man's flesh. Ripping his gun from his hand, then shooting. Shooting. His heart exploding with each bullet. "I'm sorry, Ino." Everything sounds like a closing argument but he doesn't waver. "I thought finally, maybe we would be able to stay for more than one day together. And I could offer you more." He refuses to look at her, instead he grips her hand tighter. She's just tangled lines and tubes he watches slipping away. He stopped reaching for her a long time ago. "But I can't." He breaths deeply. "Whatever you need, you ask, but I can't stay now. You understand?"

She doesn't nod, doesn't speak.

She merely watches him, pale skin and her mouth stretched in a bloodless grin. They are both cowards, both liars, two children bound to running away from each other, despite the circle. Inside she screams, bristle and ragged and too fragile, because she wishes there were enough flowers, enough colours to tell him everything she feels when she looks at him. When Kiba stands him, he turns away from the wheel that rolls and rolls, shifting back into a man she hardly recognizes, and she is still silent.

Ino closes her eyes when the door closes softly.

There will be a fifth time, she murmurs to herself. There ought to be. They ought to find peace. There will be a flower, a plant, any sprout carried by the wind that will finally explain them. Together. Her muted shouts with his gripping destructive fear.

There ought to be a time and place where such sprout can grow.

-X-

This turned out darker than I expected, but I just love writing about family dynamics. Of course, I also love how brash and impulsive Ino and Kiba are.