A Rose Bloomed: Try
Title: A Rose Bloomed Chapter 8: Try
Author: hungrytiger11
Characters: Ino, Inoichi
Summary:And, because tragic irony defined Inoichi's life, the night before she became a genin, his daughter decided to turn into a full-fledged, hormonal teenager.
Previous Chapter: The Same Kind of Different As Me
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Technically, they wouldn’t know till the next day. But did that mean they should act as if there was any question about how it would all end up? Who could deny what worked so well? Even years later, when a team was needed, who did Chouza ask for, but Shikaku, and himself? Who’s skills did Shikaku always know best how to place in any tactic the Hokage might need from him? Whose information did Inoichi most trust? What worked once would work again.
It wasn’t even a question, and that was what had Ino so pissed.
Talk to her, Yoshino-san had insisted, while Shikaku and Chouza politely averted their eyes in a way that meant they were listening and agreeing with every word exchanged. And not for the fist time, did Inoichi wish he better knew how to be a parent to his daughter, as Aiko would have, because then maybe tonight wouldn’t be playing out this way. He needed sleep tonight. Spies were at their borders and he had to deal with them tomorrow. But sleep wasn’t going to happen. Instead, he was stuck with a hormonal daughter.
So, long before Shikaku or Chouza were anywhere near drunk, even before all of the meat was gone and before the plates had been cleared, he handed Shikaku a fist full of bills and said, “Take care of my share of the cost, will you?”
He didn’t bother to wave her over, but Ino slipped out from between the two boys who would soon be her teammates, and followed silently behind him. Her eyes were red rimmed, and he regretted he hadn’t sat closer to the children’s end of the table to hear what insult had been passed. Or maybe that look just meant she was dreading a lecture. She should be, given how she behaved, just as he should be giving one because he didn’t raiser her to act that way. Instead, they moved in silence, and in less than fifteen minutes made it to their house.
“Grab your pillow and some blankets from inside,” he told her as they passed through the gate. She nodded in understanding, and, still not talking, headed to the house. Inoichi himself walked around to the far side of the yard, where an old, “standard” pack sat slumped where the fence formed a corner. The whole thing had been inexpertly tied the last time it was used, and, he when reached for it, poles and stakes came tumbling out, hitting the dirt with soft thuds. Remembering Ino had been the one to put the camping supplies away last time, Inoichi sighed, and took what hadn’t fallen out over to the center of the yard before returning for the rest. By the time he was half way through setting up the tent, Ino was back, feet dragging and a frown on her face.
“I have to be up early tomorrow.”
There was a certain whine in her voice. Inoichi pretended not to notice.
“Not as early as me; you’ll be fine.”
“I don’t see why we’re doing this.”
Yoshino-san had told him Ino tended to be like fire, with a temper that flared up but then sizzled out. Ino’d gotten into fights, thrown temper tantrums on the Nara living room floor, and once yelled at a teacher for ten minutes before bursting into tears and apologizing. He’d heard the stories and knew the witnesses, but had never seen it himself. Ino’s anger towards him had never been anything but this: a slow burn, something boiling under a lid of choked words, and never fully expressed.
“I like camping out with my girl,” he responded, deliberately missing her real point. Strategically, there are fewer places for Ino to run to avoid his questions at a campsite, even if it’s only in their yard. And besides, he liked sleeping outside more than almost anything. Made him feel closer to Aiko to be close to the stars, and further away from succumbing to the same sort of death she did, crushed under the rubble of buildings in a an attack on their city. He liked waking at night to see his wife’s eyes staring down as stars, and hearing his little girl’s breathing beside him, and smelling the embers burn. In a place like this, he was home.
Ino rolled her eyes at him, but needed no prompting to get to work with a fire. When Ino was younger, they did the whole backyard-camping-night while roasting marshmallows, waiting until the last second to take their treats from the fire, the whole thing burnt sugar on their tongues. Tonight, he didn’t even suggest it, though he knew a bag of them was sitting on the second shelf in the pantry. He finished hammering in the last stake, and the two of them sat, blankets over their shoulders, staring at the flames, saying nothing.
“I am going to make you talk about it, you know.”
No response.
On the other side of the yard, the flames made strange reflections against the glass walls of his greenhouse. The flowers inside it, and even their shadows playing against the glass, are lost to the night. Ino stared at it too, and said, “My rose bush isn’t blooming. I’m watering it lots, but it doesn’t do any good.”
He was startled by the non sequitur, but years in interrogation chambers had taught him what a person says is rarely unconnected to what you want to know. So, he turned his mind to the problem at hand.
“Do you think the roots are dead?”
Aiko was the real flower expert. He’d agreed to the shop as his cover so she’d have somewhere to try her hand at untangling the secrets of the First’s techniques. He and Ino had both learned in the twelve years since his wife’s death, but he didn’t like roses, hadn’t kept them for years since learning their various meanings. This plant was something Ino’d bought for herself a little over a year ago, and it had never, to his knowledge, bloomed.
“No.”
“A bigger pot,” he tried again.
“I dunno.”
“Ino,” he said, deciding for the blunt route. He didn’t have the time he did at the I&I offices, after all, and his daughter should have a little more trust in him than a prisoner of war would. “What does this have to do with your performance tonight?”
“Performance tonight,” she mimicked under her breath. He gritted his teeth. He could have made a bamboo switch easily from what grew in his greenhouse. Teach her some respect, but for the past while that tactic hadn’t worked as well as it once had. And he wanted her to talk, not freeze up on him. So instead, he said, “I do not want to be forced to ask again. You do not want me to either.”
The fire crackled and in the flickering light he could see his daughter’s mouth move, purposely mumbling, with her eyes avoiding his. Progress just the same though. Maybe they would have this worked out by the time Ino needed to be at the school to officially get assigned to Shikamaru-kun and Chouji-kun’s team.
“Louder, please.”
“I said- I don’t want Sakura to- win.”
He fought to place the name for a second, before finally settling on the rounded cheekbones and high forehead of a girl Ino had brought around a time or two. He hadn’t seen the girl or heard mention of her since-
Since Ino’d gotten her rose bush.
“Yellow roses mean the ending of an affair or relationship,” he heard himself say.
“And Sasuke-kun doesn’t deserve being inflicted with that traitorous, little bitch on his team.”
Sasuke. Now there was a name he didn’t even need to think about. The Last Uchiha, Shining Pride of Konoha, and, because tragic irony defined Inoichi’s life, Ino’s first, rather obsessive, crush. There’d been strange rumblings about that clan before they were murdered, and strange ones about them after. Ino didn’t need to be anywhere near that boy.
Or any boy, really.
Well, except his friends’ sons, who she hopefully would continue to not notice were boys at all. He reached out in what he hoped was a comforting manner, and said, “Well, you don’t even know if she’ll end up with him. No need to worry over-“
“And if it isn’t her, it’s gonna be mean, old Ami-baka,” Ino cut him off, even while scooting to lean up close against him. “Or one of her little sycophants. And not me, cause- cause-“
Oh, Kami. Crying. His little girl had chosen the night before becoming a genin to turn into a full-fledged, hormone-wracked teenager. Where was the hellion that he use to know?
“You’ll be with friends, Ino. You might change your mind about boys.” And actually, she would change her mind about boys, he knew. She’d eventually have a kunoichi duty after all, but she didn’t need to know all that right now. “But your friends-“
“Break your heart even worse,” Ino spit out bitterly. But thinking of the troubled faces of those boys at the dinner table, he wasn’t sure it was them she was talking about right then.
“Not Chouji-kun, Ino. Not Shikamaru-kun,” he said into her hair. And for a moment he let her rest, head on his shoulder. Sometimes, you just need to hold her, Aiko had told him that night they’d first brought her home. She had, as ever, been right.
“We’re going to fail,” she whispered. Everything else to this point had been peripheral, he could tell suddenly, orbiting this, the heart of everything she’d feared. And success was a talisman no words from him could win. It was something she and her team must work for in the morning. Her breath was moist against his sleeve as she continued, “Shikamaru, he- he’s good, more than good. I can see it sometimes- brilliant, you just know he could be- but he doesn’t do anything. We’ll get there, and he’s gonna say it’s too much work, and will just lie down, and not even try just like he’s done all through school! And Chouji, he’s- you know him- he’s not a bad shinobi. Even just us, we might be able to make it work, but he always follows Shikamaru’s lead. And- I’m tired of being alone. I -can’t- do it alone. I can’t be a team alone, and we’re all going to be sent back to Academy like stupid Naruto-kun.”
He shifted to try and move his arm without dislodging her from her spot against him. Making the hand signs that would douse the fire, he didn’t speak for several minutes, instead turning over what she’d said. The Nara boy didn’t look to be much of a teammate, true. Shikaku, and Yoshino-san in particular, had been annoyed he’d scored the lowest in the class next to that jinchūriki kid who hadn’t even passed the genin test (and thank the powers that be for that, because having that murderous demon as a potential teammate of Ino’s was unthinkable). But still. Academy was hard; to have not even tried and still made it? But potential only carried you so far. You had to, at some point, try.
Ino always tried, determination the most shining part of her. What worlds of difference between them, then. He would be interested now, even more so, to see this team grow.
“No matter what else they are, these two boys are your friends, Ino. I can’t see them as the kind to break your heart, so I must believe, as you must too, that they are kind that will always try and help you. That when push comes to shove, they will have your back.”
As Shikaku and Chouza had been his family since even before he lost his own, these boys will have his daughter’s back. This was not even a question to him. Smoke rose in the air, the last embers dying out. She lifted her head and his skin felt cold where she had once been.
“Dad?” she said, no emotion at all in her voice. “We have to get up early, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah, Ino.”
“Okay. Dad?” she said again.
“Yes?”
“ I love you. Good night.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Next: A Rose Blooms
Author: hungrytiger11
Characters: Ino, Inoichi
Summary:And, because tragic irony defined Inoichi's life, the night before she became a genin, his daughter decided to turn into a full-fledged, hormonal teenager.
Previous Chapter: The Same Kind of Different As Me
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Technically, they wouldn’t know till the next day. But did that mean they should act as if there was any question about how it would all end up? Who could deny what worked so well? Even years later, when a team was needed, who did Chouza ask for, but Shikaku, and himself? Who’s skills did Shikaku always know best how to place in any tactic the Hokage might need from him? Whose information did Inoichi most trust? What worked once would work again.
It wasn’t even a question, and that was what had Ino so pissed.
Talk to her, Yoshino-san had insisted, while Shikaku and Chouza politely averted their eyes in a way that meant they were listening and agreeing with every word exchanged. And not for the fist time, did Inoichi wish he better knew how to be a parent to his daughter, as Aiko would have, because then maybe tonight wouldn’t be playing out this way. He needed sleep tonight. Spies were at their borders and he had to deal with them tomorrow. But sleep wasn’t going to happen. Instead, he was stuck with a hormonal daughter.
So, long before Shikaku or Chouza were anywhere near drunk, even before all of the meat was gone and before the plates had been cleared, he handed Shikaku a fist full of bills and said, “Take care of my share of the cost, will you?”
He didn’t bother to wave her over, but Ino slipped out from between the two boys who would soon be her teammates, and followed silently behind him. Her eyes were red rimmed, and he regretted he hadn’t sat closer to the children’s end of the table to hear what insult had been passed. Or maybe that look just meant she was dreading a lecture. She should be, given how she behaved, just as he should be giving one because he didn’t raiser her to act that way. Instead, they moved in silence, and in less than fifteen minutes made it to their house.
“Grab your pillow and some blankets from inside,” he told her as they passed through the gate. She nodded in understanding, and, still not talking, headed to the house. Inoichi himself walked around to the far side of the yard, where an old, “standard” pack sat slumped where the fence formed a corner. The whole thing had been inexpertly tied the last time it was used, and, he when reached for it, poles and stakes came tumbling out, hitting the dirt with soft thuds. Remembering Ino had been the one to put the camping supplies away last time, Inoichi sighed, and took what hadn’t fallen out over to the center of the yard before returning for the rest. By the time he was half way through setting up the tent, Ino was back, feet dragging and a frown on her face.
“I have to be up early tomorrow.”
There was a certain whine in her voice. Inoichi pretended not to notice.
“Not as early as me; you’ll be fine.”
“I don’t see why we’re doing this.”
Yoshino-san had told him Ino tended to be like fire, with a temper that flared up but then sizzled out. Ino’d gotten into fights, thrown temper tantrums on the Nara living room floor, and once yelled at a teacher for ten minutes before bursting into tears and apologizing. He’d heard the stories and knew the witnesses, but had never seen it himself. Ino’s anger towards him had never been anything but this: a slow burn, something boiling under a lid of choked words, and never fully expressed.
“I like camping out with my girl,” he responded, deliberately missing her real point. Strategically, there are fewer places for Ino to run to avoid his questions at a campsite, even if it’s only in their yard. And besides, he liked sleeping outside more than almost anything. Made him feel closer to Aiko to be close to the stars, and further away from succumbing to the same sort of death she did, crushed under the rubble of buildings in a an attack on their city. He liked waking at night to see his wife’s eyes staring down as stars, and hearing his little girl’s breathing beside him, and smelling the embers burn. In a place like this, he was home.
Ino rolled her eyes at him, but needed no prompting to get to work with a fire. When Ino was younger, they did the whole backyard-camping-night while roasting marshmallows, waiting until the last second to take their treats from the fire, the whole thing burnt sugar on their tongues. Tonight, he didn’t even suggest it, though he knew a bag of them was sitting on the second shelf in the pantry. He finished hammering in the last stake, and the two of them sat, blankets over their shoulders, staring at the flames, saying nothing.
“I am going to make you talk about it, you know.”
No response.
On the other side of the yard, the flames made strange reflections against the glass walls of his greenhouse. The flowers inside it, and even their shadows playing against the glass, are lost to the night. Ino stared at it too, and said, “My rose bush isn’t blooming. I’m watering it lots, but it doesn’t do any good.”
He was startled by the non sequitur, but years in interrogation chambers had taught him what a person says is rarely unconnected to what you want to know. So, he turned his mind to the problem at hand.
“Do you think the roots are dead?”
Aiko was the real flower expert. He’d agreed to the shop as his cover so she’d have somewhere to try her hand at untangling the secrets of the First’s techniques. He and Ino had both learned in the twelve years since his wife’s death, but he didn’t like roses, hadn’t kept them for years since learning their various meanings. This plant was something Ino’d bought for herself a little over a year ago, and it had never, to his knowledge, bloomed.
“No.”
“A bigger pot,” he tried again.
“I dunno.”
“Ino,” he said, deciding for the blunt route. He didn’t have the time he did at the I&I offices, after all, and his daughter should have a little more trust in him than a prisoner of war would. “What does this have to do with your performance tonight?”
“Performance tonight,” she mimicked under her breath. He gritted his teeth. He could have made a bamboo switch easily from what grew in his greenhouse. Teach her some respect, but for the past while that tactic hadn’t worked as well as it once had. And he wanted her to talk, not freeze up on him. So instead, he said, “I do not want to be forced to ask again. You do not want me to either.”
The fire crackled and in the flickering light he could see his daughter’s mouth move, purposely mumbling, with her eyes avoiding his. Progress just the same though. Maybe they would have this worked out by the time Ino needed to be at the school to officially get assigned to Shikamaru-kun and Chouji-kun’s team.
“Louder, please.”
“I said- I don’t want Sakura to- win.”
He fought to place the name for a second, before finally settling on the rounded cheekbones and high forehead of a girl Ino had brought around a time or two. He hadn’t seen the girl or heard mention of her since-
Since Ino’d gotten her rose bush.
“Yellow roses mean the ending of an affair or relationship,” he heard himself say.
“And Sasuke-kun doesn’t deserve being inflicted with that traitorous, little bitch on his team.”
Sasuke. Now there was a name he didn’t even need to think about. The Last Uchiha, Shining Pride of Konoha, and, because tragic irony defined Inoichi’s life, Ino’s first, rather obsessive, crush. There’d been strange rumblings about that clan before they were murdered, and strange ones about them after. Ino didn’t need to be anywhere near that boy.
Or any boy, really.
Well, except his friends’ sons, who she hopefully would continue to not notice were boys at all. He reached out in what he hoped was a comforting manner, and said, “Well, you don’t even know if she’ll end up with him. No need to worry over-“
“And if it isn’t her, it’s gonna be mean, old Ami-baka,” Ino cut him off, even while scooting to lean up close against him. “Or one of her little sycophants. And not me, cause- cause-“
Oh, Kami. Crying. His little girl had chosen the night before becoming a genin to turn into a full-fledged, hormone-wracked teenager. Where was the hellion that he use to know?
“You’ll be with friends, Ino. You might change your mind about boys.” And actually, she would change her mind about boys, he knew. She’d eventually have a kunoichi duty after all, but she didn’t need to know all that right now. “But your friends-“
“Break your heart even worse,” Ino spit out bitterly. But thinking of the troubled faces of those boys at the dinner table, he wasn’t sure it was them she was talking about right then.
“Not Chouji-kun, Ino. Not Shikamaru-kun,” he said into her hair. And for a moment he let her rest, head on his shoulder. Sometimes, you just need to hold her, Aiko had told him that night they’d first brought her home. She had, as ever, been right.
“We’re going to fail,” she whispered. Everything else to this point had been peripheral, he could tell suddenly, orbiting this, the heart of everything she’d feared. And success was a talisman no words from him could win. It was something she and her team must work for in the morning. Her breath was moist against his sleeve as she continued, “Shikamaru, he- he’s good, more than good. I can see it sometimes- brilliant, you just know he could be- but he doesn’t do anything. We’ll get there, and he’s gonna say it’s too much work, and will just lie down, and not even try just like he’s done all through school! And Chouji, he’s- you know him- he’s not a bad shinobi. Even just us, we might be able to make it work, but he always follows Shikamaru’s lead. And- I’m tired of being alone. I -can’t- do it alone. I can’t be a team alone, and we’re all going to be sent back to Academy like stupid Naruto-kun.”
He shifted to try and move his arm without dislodging her from her spot against him. Making the hand signs that would douse the fire, he didn’t speak for several minutes, instead turning over what she’d said. The Nara boy didn’t look to be much of a teammate, true. Shikaku, and Yoshino-san in particular, had been annoyed he’d scored the lowest in the class next to that jinchūriki kid who hadn’t even passed the genin test (and thank the powers that be for that, because having that murderous demon as a potential teammate of Ino’s was unthinkable). But still. Academy was hard; to have not even tried and still made it? But potential only carried you so far. You had to, at some point, try.
Ino always tried, determination the most shining part of her. What worlds of difference between them, then. He would be interested now, even more so, to see this team grow.
“No matter what else they are, these two boys are your friends, Ino. I can’t see them as the kind to break your heart, so I must believe, as you must too, that they are kind that will always try and help you. That when push comes to shove, they will have your back.”
As Shikaku and Chouza had been his family since even before he lost his own, these boys will have his daughter’s back. This was not even a question to him. Smoke rose in the air, the last embers dying out. She lifted her head and his skin felt cold where she had once been.
“Dad?” she said, no emotion at all in her voice. “We have to get up early, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah, Ino.”
“Okay. Dad?” she said again.
“Yes?”
“ I love you. Good night.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Next: A Rose Blooms